Hi. I've a Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive (that actually I don't recommend) and it had, first, a Seagate ST31000333AS 1TB (Barracuda 7200.11).

First of all, I'll explain (but maybe most of all members already know it better than me ) that the home NAS works with three partitions: one, a Linux OS; another one I don't know what is (swap partition, maybe?) and a third one to store the user data, with a XFS file system. This file system can loose its file index if you interrupt abruptly an own operation.

After 3 years and a little bit, the NAS froze (not that weird), had to unplug the power cord (couldn't turn it off, not even pressing several seconds the power button), and after rebooting, all the data disappeared. I could recover all (or the majority) of it moving its internal HDD to an external USB case and with the ZAR software.

I stored the most important stuff in another HDD after that, but still kept all my things there moving them again to the NAS with the same HDD (at that time, 1 TB was unthinkable for my budget). And several months later, data dissapeared again. But this time the ZAR couldn't help me... So, I thought that this HDD has definitely dead (but I kept the HDD).

I know that you'll be so surprised reading this, but it would be great to recover, at least, part of that data.

These are the actual facts for my case:

There's no hurry: I can try slow things, order tools online, etc.

Although I would like to recover data, it's personal data that I could let go (I mean: I have no intentions of paying 1000€ or more, at least at the moment)

I have the second HDD that I installed in the NAS (it was a bad second hand purchase, lasted only a few months). It's not the same model (it's a Seagate ST31000525SV, SV35.5 1 TB), but has the same symptoms (so I may make dangerous tries with this one first, because its data is less valuable)

I could even try something dangerous that makes it 99,9% unrecoverable even for professionals: I prefer to learn to recover it by myself than the "easy" solution.

The symptoms are: NAS doesn't boot with it, but Windows disk manager and GParted under Ubuntu detects the 3 partitions (but a working HDD formated for this NAS has no "user loadable" ones on Windows nor Ubuntu, so I don't know about the index tables). There's no weird sounds, but when I try with ZAR to recover data, in a few minutes, as I can hear, the HDD stops to move the heads for reading (but motor is still spinning) and ZAR detects no data (maybe even before stop started to ignore data).

My doubts are:

Could I make, at least, some minimally precise diagnosis by myself? (I mean: it's something in the SA, it's mechanical although I hear nothing weird, etc.) If you ar experienced with those models, what would you say that happened? (I know, they're old, dead and probably not that reliable even since they went out their factory; but more precisely )

Apart from paying 1000€ or more to specialists, do you think that I could try something to access once to that data and throw it away forever? What would you do? (Something like a sequential action list )

Do you think that if I change the PCB with another one of the same model would work? (with or without the same BIOS chip)

Thanks in advance

What if you try to clone it to a new drive with ddrescue/hddsuperclone, will it complete successfully?

Post a S.M.A.R.T. report.

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

Do not change the PCB, because it will not help, and exclude dangerous manipulations with original ROM. The most common issues with models that mentioned above are bad blocks, bad blocks combined with FW issue, dying heads, motor problems. In your case, by description, your drives have bad blocks combined with FW issue (at least, one of them). But situation is not stable with time, as much as you power on the drives they are close to worse condition. If you have no special tools, or at least, some ATA copier, it would be a murder. If you want to try/learn by yourself - the easiest way in this case is to buy TTL adapter and using Y-modem start learning a command set (you can get it on level C, Q command). If you are really interested in data, better to give it to pofessional, price should seriously less then 1000 euro because drives are not in critical situation yet.

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http://www.alfadatarecovery.com

@JGAN & @thathellguy, I'm afraid it's not that simple. I didn't realize before, but now I can tell you that the only way to connect these HDDs and check that the Windows Disc Manager and GParted "see" the partitions is with an external USB 2.0 case. With this one, SMART can't be checked: CrystalDIskInfo doesn't show it and Victoria says, if SMART report is asked, that there was an error. Besides, if I begin a test, it says that there are errors (it was stoped a few seconds later):



If I connect it via eSATA or internal SATA, they only last a few seconds as connected. Then dissapear for BIOS or OS. When booting, SMART says that something is wrong, that's true:



@Martin Thank you very much, that's a good start point. So, it may be a FW issue + bad blocks. I only connect the drive if I consider some test is necessary, otherwise I was thinking the same (the more time powered, the less probabilities for recovering the info).

Ok, this will be my first time experimenting in this field, so please confirm me that I understood what you told me. The steps that you recommend me (if I want to try by myself), then, are:

1. Get a TTL adapter. I think I'll get, for example, this one. I could get a COM version as well (I have computers with COM ports), because I understand that the USB version gives no additional problems, right? Or do you recommend to get a COM one directly? For example, this one. Do you think guys that they would be good choices? Because my father bought USB-COM adapters for other uses and some of them don't work very well.
2. When I receive it (it will take some weeks, but I'm not in a hurry and it's perfectly ok), I can use a program to communicate with the HDD through the TX-RX port. I'm not familiar with the YMODEM protocol. Can I use RealTerm, or do I need another program like ExtraPuTTY for this? Or do you recommend other ones (Windows/Ubuntu)?

3. Do you mean that I can try with F3 commands? I'm not sure if you are talking about the called F3 C>Q ones here, and these ones seems to be "checkers" (they don't modify anything, they just check how is the firmware/SA in the HDD). Am I right?