I don't really have a background in DR (I hear you all sigh). I have always been a RAID 1/5 whore and disk recovery has been a non issue.

However I went travelling after uni with a laptop and a 7200.11 disc in an external caddy.

And it began to act erratically, producing delayed write errors. Initially (unaware of the issues surrounding the 7200.11) I assumed that it was a crappy controller chip in the caddy. I stopped using the drive until I managed to get access to a PC and attempt a full backup. I copied off about 250MB of files, at which point the drive stopped functioning.

The drive fails to appear in BIOS.
MHDD can communicate with the drive, but any operation fails.
There are discolourations on the PCB, under the cache and controller chips (see pictures).
The drive seems to spin up perfectly fine.

I'm guessing it is probably the same SA problem that so many people have had, but I was also wondering if a short or power surge could have caused the discolouration.

Finally [and keeping in mind that a PC3000 UDMA is probably well outside my budget] I'm in Canada, how much is data recovery likely to cost? I visited the one local firm offering it, and they seemed to know less than I do. Is there anybody on here based in Canada who has experience with the 7200.11?

It sounds like a head issue, not SA issue.

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www.datarecoveryne.com

Could be either SA or head. From 800-1000$ up to 2500 maybe.