Hello experts!

One day my hard drive died, and I'm not sure what caused it, maybe a power surge. If so it only affected the primary hard drive in my laptop and nothing else. It is a Seagate ST9320320AS 320GB 2.5" SATA laptop drive.

- When I turned it on, it beeped quietly every second or so and did not spin up, or boot.
- I put it into a hard drive caddy and torqued/twisted it with my wrists which seemed to get it to spin, but then it clicked.
- Opened it up, took the head out and put a new one in, the head was damaged
- Now the drive spins, quietly and constantly but the arm doesnt sound like it's engaging anything. Not detected by the bios or windows.
- Tried another PCB from the same model, same firmware, same date code (within 2 weeks), same site code. Hard drive sounds like it flickers/flutters instead of just being quiet.
- Will be swapping the EEPROM chip next.

If this does not work, are there anything else I can try? If it's a firmware problem, can I use the same commands as the BSY barracuda fix to get mine going or do they need to be different because my drive isn't the same? Any definite way to tell whether it's a firmware problem?

Thanks and regards,
Megamox

You swapped heads?!?! What have you checked to get a donor?
I can tell you: it's not a firmware problem...

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Great! I have no idea about firmware. The donor came from the other hard drive bay, the laptop was in a RAID configuration when I bought it, two identical hard drives. Same everything. Same PCB Sticker code, part number, hard drive number model, date code, site code.

Yes took the bad head out and put the good one in, used paper and a sewing needle.

Regards,
Megamox

Don't forget to follow the code!

DIY code of conduct:
1. Replaced parts at random.
2. If it doesn't turn, make it turn!
3. Firmware can solve anything.
4. Youtube is great DIY HD training.
5. Only seek help when all else fails.

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Thanks I forgot to mention, after the head replacement, the drive worked long enough for me to recover some important files. But has since disappeared again.

Btw: From all I've read on this forum, you are all very smart and capable engineers, if I had another lifetime to dedicate to study and learn, it would be in data recovery and I would wish to be a part of this community.

Regards,
Megamox

Hi, no clean room I'm afraid, exposure lasted about 90 seconds, although I shielded the platter with a DIY polished platter shield. No visible platter damage but could not see the rear surfaces.

Thanks,
Megamox

Thank you I shall begin searching for this method on the forums and see if I can learn how to do this.

Best regards,
Megamox

A Headswap in 90sec...that got to be some kind of record!

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Hi, Well the data would be nice to have back The head swap was very quick, I learned from you tube Some pictures of my shield and my head. I'm not supporting my methods, just explaining how I decided to approach this problem. Until last week, I had never opened one before.

Best regards,
Megamox

Not a great example of my DIY skill The platter is clean and untouched by the shield, resting about 1mm above it on piloted screws into the chasis. The marks are on the top of the shield during my careless manufacture. It's made from a plastic CD that usually comes when you buy spindles of blank discs. I also made some head combs from a dental pick I used to work for Dell, creativity was encouraged

Best regards,
Megamox

Thanks, I will do my best. I'll look up the tll method

Regards,
Megamox

Thanks I have found the RS232->TTL method you mention, Seems like once I have the cable I should press Cntrl+Z in terminal mode... but then, the commands to ask it for a diagnosis are still beyond me.

I will keep looking and thank you for the assistance

Regards,
Megamox

Amazing I will order this cable below, connect it to the serial port of the drive. Use the configuration: Baud 38400, Data Bits 8, Stop bits 1, Parity 1, Flow Control 1. Hit Cntrl+Z and ... pray

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FT232BM-BL-Se ... 3f2168f4de

Regards,
Megamox

Looks like half moon platter damage ring to me

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

I see a lot of oxidation on pcb head contact, try to clean those with a pencil eraser.

Thanks everyone for your time and help I will try to give the contacts a clean and observe how the head behaves upon power up. When the drive has a donor PCB powering it, the arm does flutter back and forth from what I can hear, for this reason I assumed power and connection to the arm/heads through the PCB was adequate in general. I figured the last element to try would be to exchange the EEPROM.

Best regards,
Megamox

Here's a recording of how the drive sounds with 1) the original PCB board (spinup), 2) a working donor PCB board from the other drive (flickers). Does the power sound adequate?

Regards,
Megamox

I think the heads are not compatible or platter damage.

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Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Given this, I would go for platter damage, bad technique or contamination.

Chances are the heads were compatible.

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PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

I lean toward contamination, because the drive was exposed to non-cleanroom air.

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.