Hello guys!
I'm new into the whole fixing HDD scene. I hope to find some help here since I do have a severe issue with my HDD.

The HDD would one day just stop working as it should. It does turn on and I can hear it spinning but the "crackling" noise it would make when it loads stuff are gone. My system can detect that there are 3 partitions and according to disk manager it seems to be able to figure out the correct sizes of the partitions and the whole drive, however!

The file system is RAW and the drive is extremely slow, even making my system boot up really slow since it tries to detect it.

What could be the cause of this issue? Does anyone have an idea what I can do to fix it? Is the PCB dead?

Since BIOS recognizes the hard disk, and the OS recognizes the size and the existance of partitioins, the pcb is not dead, otherwise none of this would occur.

You probably have bad heads, bad sectors in the media, and possibly firmware corruption.

If the data is important, better to take it to a competent recovery expert. If the data is not important, just forget the drive ( it won´t get fixed ) and buy another.

And if data is not important at all but you would still want to try to recover it CLONE your drive to another one using HDDSuperClone and then run recovery software like R-Studio ON THE CLONE and save the data to ANOTHER 3RD DRIVE !!!

As you have a 7200.12 you might want to check with Victoria for windows or MHDD first if you can SCAN the start, middle and end of the LBA space. If not you might have translator problems and/or partial access problem and it might require further action to fix it prior to clone the drive.

If data is of any importance to you please do use the services of a reputable DATA RECOVERY FIRM Right NOW !!!! And don't send the drive to a regular computer repair shop for recovery .... And forget about the internet sollution for 7200.11 drives, DO NOT DO IT. You will mess your drive for good and price for recovery will be way more expensive.

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See http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=1842&start=60#p10834

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I'm in a situation where the data is very important but I simply don't have money for the data recovery service, I'ts quite a mess:/

I'm not sure what to take from fzabkars post.

If the data is very important, keep the hdd stored in a safe place until you get the necessary amount of money. Don´t play with it and risk your data.

Of course, it is your data, so ....

Just understand that anything you do to it can destroy it for good, or at least make it cost very much more.

Get a USB-TTL adapter (US$5) and show us the output from the drive's terminal port.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Can you provide an ebay link?

Just clone your drive with HDClone buddy. If partitions are there, you should not have a problem. Just enable Smart Copy and off you go. If there are any bad sectors, it will skip them. Once you cloned your drive, get yourself a replacement from the manufacturer with opening the RMA.

Let me know if that works. Cheers!

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Yevgeniy. No, NOT Malkin.
Ambassador at ADRS®

As I write this, MasterHDD has 8 posts and just joined 2 days ago. Two of those posts suggest using HDClone. None of the posts indicate any real knowledge. Possible spammer for HDClone?

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Probably

I don't think that HDClone would help the OP ... Not to mention this is an "old" post ...

I did never use HDClone but i don't think it would beat HDDSuperClone or even ddrescue as a free software only cloning tool ...

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Different strokes for different folks, folks.

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Yevgeniy. No, NOT Malkin.
Ambassador at ADRS®

I am going to refer to the software you mentioned as "software that shall not be named", as I don't want to help spam it more. I am already disappointed in myself for quoting it and retyping the name in a previous post. My bad

I tried it, the free version, both the bootable iso and the executable (I even got daring and installed it too), and it is just total crap. I couldn't get it to clone a drive at all, it just cancelled as soon as I started it, and when trying to image it just said it was done after imaging 2048 sectors. Total crap software.

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Home of HDDSuperClone and HDDSuperTool

Hello dbstuff. If you can try the HDD in another computer (or the one you have) and it is detected in the BIOS you can try the DIY software. https://www.seagate.com/services-software/recover/recovery-software/. Here is a link with an FAQ. http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/219611en?language=en-us. Best of luck.

@seagate_surfer, it's too bad that Seagate's firmware (and WD's) falls over when the drive hits a patch of bad sectors. Worse still, the solution often involves a simple fix from behind a keyboard. Even worse than that, Quantum's drives enabled its users to apply a similar "fix" using publicly documented, vendor specific ATA commands. It would be a very simple matter for Seagate (and WD) to provide a simple tool for their beleaguered users so that they could do what the "professionals" do, for no cost. Isn't it about time?

BTW, do you know when SeaChest will be provided as a routine matter in place of the essentially useless SeaTools?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Ok, to recap :

- If the data is VERY IMPORTANT to you keep the drive in a SAFE PLACE and save money for professional data recovery. At this point it shouldn't be a very expensive recovery.

- If you don't want to pay a cent and because this is NOT a 7200.11 drive and it's a 7200.12 one that possible have "problems" with partial access you can try to get a TTL adatptor and connect it to the drive. Power up the drive and check the log. DO NOT ISSUE ANY COMMAND !!! Just post the LOG the drive is making :

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=192

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=193

- Now the only "safe" thing to do over terminal is to issue the mentioned commands - http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php? ... =60#p10834 .

- Lacking hardware based imaging/cloning tools you now need to use available FREE tools to clone the drive to another working one with the same capacity (or bigger). You should use either HDDSuperClone or ddrescue ONLY. But first you should use MHDD or Victoria and do a check on the drive. Check S.M.A.R.T. attributes (and post here) and also do a "verify" scan on the start of the drive for some moments, then skuip to the middle of the drive and to the end. This will allow you to know if you can verify the entire LBA space. If NOT you are stuck with partial access problem.

DO NOT USE TRANSLATOR REGENERATION OR ANY SORT OF m commands on that drive. DO NOT CLEAR DEFECT LISTS as well....

To safely work with your drive you need FIRMWARE TOOLS to backup sysfiles and modules in case you do mess up big time making the recovery way more expensive or even impossible.

Good luck.

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