Seagate Momentus 5400.3 Diagnosis?

[mithlondir]

Hello all -

I've been scouring this site for several hours and would just like to ask a quick question in the interests of preserving my sanity.

This morning, I tried to power up my laptop to no avail. BIOS cannot detect my current drive, although it ran perfectly last night without even a hint of a problem:

SEAGATE Momentus 5400.3
160 GB
Model: ST9160821A
PN: 9S1034-508
FW: 3.ALD
DATE: 07511
SITE: WU

I swapped it for an older 5400.2 which was detected just fine (this is the drive I most recently backed key files up to, however it does not have an OS.)

The 5400.3 will not spin up, and emitts a very faint "whining" noise which I would be very hard pressed to call a "clicking". I am curious as to what you all think that the problem might be... heads, platter, etc.

I believe that I can recover most of my critical data from previous backups, so I am hesitant to sent this drive in for recovery.... thoughts?

Many Thanks,
PETE.

[harddrivespecialist]

Good diagnostic of the problem is a first step to be taken.

[BlackST]

Seems stiction...

[harddrivespecialist]

Yes, stiction is most likely case.

[pcimage]

Agree

[mithlondir]

Thank you for the responses...

Would stiction cause any damage to the platter or loss of data? And is the sort of problem which would cost an exhorbitant amount of money to have fixed?

I received one reply from a DR company who quoted me USD 1250, for diagnosis and recovery (if possible).

As I previously stated, I don't necessarily need to recover this drive, but it certainly would make life easier to do so.

Cheers,
PETE.

[pcimage]

Stiction would almost certainly cause a certain amount of data loss due to the heads being in physical contact with the platter, but not necessarily platter damage.

USD1250? A little excessive I think.

Assuming stiction is the only problem, then we would normally quote £295 + tax, on an economy (14 days+) service. No-fix no-fee. Free analysis.

We're pretty fair, and we're not desperate for business, but keen to help, ask anyone!

[BlackST]

Same range here in Euro for identical problem.

[HDD Spaz]

Stiction would almost certainly cause a certain amount of data loss due to the heads being in physical contact with the platter, but not necessarily platter damage.

I have to disagree with this. Cases where stiction has occured I usually get 100% of the data. Normally the drives will have some unreadable sectors (but not enough to cause severe data loss) if the fault is corrected properly.

[pcimage]

Stiction would almost certainly cause a certain amount of data loss due to the heads being in physical contact with the platter, but not necessarily platter damage.

I have to disagree with this. Cases where stiction has occured I usually get 100% of the data. Normally the drives will have some unreadable sectors (but not enough to cause severe data loss) if the fault is corrected properly.

That's why I said a "certain amount"

"Some unreadable sectors" does not equate to a 100.00% image in my book.

But nonetheless like you say, if the fault is corrected properly (as I would do) then usually VIRTUALLY 100% (usually ~99.99%+) of the required actual data is recoverable.

Also like Spildt says, more often than not the unreadable sectors are of inconsequential data, such as O/S or swap file etc.