Hello everyone!

I am wondering if a PCB fault is causing the BIOS not recognizing the HDD.
So if the PCB is OK shouldn't the BIOS recognize the HDD, no matter what (e.g. state of the heads)?

Hi mavosx,

BIOS must always read some info from disk surface
for success.

Some drives like Toshiba use pcb for lot of data, but
even these must read some data from surface to report
to BIOS correctly.

pcb fault mostly results in :

drive don't spin.
drive can "click".

its clicking noise? u can get the ATA registers state, if its showing BSY, & not knocking maybe could be a PCB Problem, if u get DRDY DSC, then could be a SA problem

Wich brand its u HDD?
Best Regards

Alberto

Hello!

Thank you for your answers coffebean and Alberto.

The HDD that I am concerned about is a Samsung 501LJ SATA 500GB (3 platters). It has a constant clicking noise from the time I power up, and it is not recognized by the Promise controller at boot time (30 seconds pass and it keeps seeking but it doesn't find the HDD).

Hi,

it is probably having head damage. U should not run it if U want the data back since severe surface damage may occur rendering everything must worse than it is now.
This is a work for an expert...
regards,
pepe

_________________
Adatmentés - Data recovery

Like peter told u ...

Maybe its a bad head, i get a samsung 120gb on this week from customer to DR , be able to disabled the bad head, and get sectors from the good heads, and well idiscovered the bad head was the H1, so getting sectors from the remaining heads i can get some of data from client need´s , but not all data, so the only option to get full data was after the head swap, and like pepe told, if u want data, and u dont have idea about HDD Enginnering , u need a DR specialist, i had get a case on the month ago, SP0802N here on my country mexico wich the client by ingorance arrive to another DR people who try to did the head swap,well after this they made a beatiful head crash when try to turn on again the hdd over the platters, after many tasks we can get only like 60% of data , the client on this case need 3 files very important from an account program, we can get only two files unfortunely because the crash was over this zone on the user area, and some near the SA zone, so in conclusion if u dont know, about HDD Engineering, dont did a head swap
Best Regards

Alberto