Video: https://youtu.be/_pWWa6gpYHg

I thought it was the read write head, but I replaced it and it's the same issue. Probably didn't do a great job of swapping it over though so may have damaged the replacement head...

Apologies in advance for trying to do this DIY. Don't mind paying for any parts or anything to try and read it but obviously can't afford professional service.

then bin it

Great thanks, other than binning it though, what would you suggest? And if I was to take it to a professional service, what do you think their analysis would be?

Did you check that the cost would have been before opening the drive?

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Joep - http://www.disktuna.com - video & photo repair & recovery service

No, only as I had sent a external drive off for a quote that had failed before, a WD powered one, and it was some £700+ quote, so I assumed any service is going to be far more than I can afford. I can only sapre about £150 to have this fixed, if not then fair enough might have to bin it, but any advice as to what the actual problem might be would be a great help.

For those old 2,5 Seagate drives, there was min 4 different preamplifier types . You have to buy bunch of them to find proper one , and moreover , it is not going to work easily after heads swap, you need special clonning tool, like pc3k or mrt and deal over terminal to fix some FW things which appears anyway with not original heads sets and different adaptives though. For 200-300$ you have a chance to recover the data if you sent it to some poor areas like eastern europe, India , Africa etc

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Angel Data Recovery