Bit of a long story here probably full of bad decisions, but here goes.

I have a Seagate 2TB Sata drive that I used for my OS install, and of course backed nothing up. 10+ years of pictures, video, documents... Anyway, one day it just wouldn't boot, so I was using Hiren's various tools to try to figure out what the problem was. Some tools would see it, but not most. I may have zeroed out the MBR at some point.

I ended up bringing it to a local data recovery place, and they said it was a firmware issue and would cost over $700 to fix. I decided to bring it home and do more of my own research.

Upon further testing, I discovered that SOMETIMES, around 10 seconds after plugging it in, Seatools could detect it, and it would show up in windows. I could even see my files! But before I could copy anything, it would freeze and stop detecting it at all, right back to square one. I was able to pretty consistently do this.

I took a chance and ordered the same model PCB board (100687658 REV C) for $17 off eBay, and paid an additional $20 for my local repair guy to swap the BIOS chip. Worth a try, I figured.

Now, the drive is always detected by certain tools, but is lacking partitions, and now reads as a 128GB RAW, uninitialized drive. When opening Disc Management, Windows asks to initialize it and specify the partition style, it fails with an I/O error.

SO,

I'm guessing it WASN'T the PCB board... any suggestions? Do I need to take it back to the recovery people and cough up my savings?

It will have been a firmware issue (MC probably) which is stored on the platters, and nothing to do with the PCB.

But can't explain why a new PCB with ROM swap would alter the symptoms, assuming the replacement PCB is working and compatible and the ROM swap done properly.

But $700+ does sound a bit steep for a FW issue, wish we could get away with charging that much!!!

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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!

As @pcimage said, the PCB swap sounds suspicious. Either the donor PCB is bad or something was done wrong with the ROM transfer. You will need to access the ROM data to see if the serial number matches...could be that they put the donor ROM back on the board.

As for the cost, $700 for a firmware issue is way too much, in my opinion. We recover most Seagate DM drives at our minor recovery rate of $350CAD. $700 would be if the heads are damaged and need replacement.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Can you show us a report by CrystalDiskInfo?

http://www.crystaldiskinfo.com/

Can you also try DMDE (freeware disc editor)?

http://dmde.com/

I suspect that DMDE won't see the drive, but can you show us DMDE's Partitions window?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

I couldn't find a report option, did you mean just show you what the drive looked like with CrystalDiskInfo? Here's that:




Yup, I aborted the scan because it was doing nothing but detecting bad sectors, but here's the partition window.

Does that serial number shown match with the one on the drive label?

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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!

Hmm, no it does not! The serial number on my drive is actually S1E1SHC9.

So, we are back to my comment that they did not move the ROM to the donor board. I sure hope you still have the original ROM chip.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I do have the original board still... this may be partially my fault. In all my research about replacing this particular PCB, all the sites that sell it mention "replacing the bios chip", which, to my understanding, is the 8 pin chip shown here (this is the old board).


If that was the incorrect thing to swap, or there is something additional to swap, this was unknown to both me and the guy I took it to. Should I take it back and have him swap another chip?

That is the correct chip. But the serial number of the drive is stored on this chip so if it is not showing correctly, as previously stated this is not the chip originally on your drive.

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HDD, SSD, Flash and RAID Data Recovery
Founder of The Data Recovery Professionals Group

What is the date of manufacture on the label of your drive?

The date codes on the RAM and SMOOTH chips are 306 and 305, meaning weeks 5 and 6 of 2013.

What are the numbers on the "ROM"? In fact, can you tell us the numbers on the other PCB's chips as well?

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Here is a picture of the new board:



And... sorry for being dense, but I'm still a little confused about the meaning of "ROM". Is that what I keep calling the bios?

The "ROM" is the "BIOS chip".

What I'm suggesting is that you write down all the markings on the ROM and the larger chips on each of your PCBs. Also tell us the manufacture date on the drive's label. Then we can compare the date codes of each of the chips. If these date codes differ by too many weeks, then this would raise suspicions as to whether the chips are from the same drive.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Here is the ST2000DM001 that I got to assess today. Not quite what the client and I was looking for.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Ouch! There is way too much data outside the disks!!!
Well done Seagate!

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www.datasave.ro

Actual reason of failure of TS drive is week head.

This guy contacted me and offered to fix it for $200. I sent him the drive, and soon afterwards, he told me exactly what the problem was and how he would solve it. It DID turn out to be damaged heads, which I could never have fixed on my own.

A couple days after that, he provided me with an interactive list of all the contents of my hard drive. Everything was there! I made him a quick excel sheet of the folders I wanted to keep, and another couple days later, I had downloaded every single file from the cloud!

From now on, I back everything up, but guys like him are what we need more of in these situtations. What a life saver!

Also, I ended up going with this drive as a replacement. I now have Windows on an SSD, and I plan to always back up my pics and stuff, but for games, downloads, and movies, I figured this works fine.

$200 for a head failure on a DM001 series, including the donor parts?

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CDR - Manchester Data Recovery Services
0161 408 4857
http://www.cheadledatarecovery.co.uk/

Easy. Do it after hours using your employer's parts.

Tech wins
End user wins
Employer loses

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

even if he used employer's parts that price still quite steep

it would be nice if people finally understood why DR costs what it costs and not ruin the marked with stupid prices...
but i guess this moment will not happen soon, if ever...

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Adatmentés - Data recovery