Seagate Drives - Original and Backup both not working

[tantrix]

Hey Guys...

Just joined this board.. Read a bunch of threads out there and am here to add my own problem to the pool of so many more

About a month ago I was planning a move from AZ to DC. I have two identical Seagate Barracuda Hard Drives. The one with my OS on it had 4-5 years worth of pics/videos etc. Before moving, I copied the data to the second drive. Lets call them A and B.

Then A I shipped with the PC. It was screwed in, but somehow when it reached here, I noticed that the drive was free to move around the cabin. It had sustained some damage and the 2 3R3 inductors and one 1R3 inductor on the PCB were broken.

Meanwhile, I'd kept B with me in an external enclosure. I used it for a bit and yesterday when I plugged in into my computer, the drive started literally screeching (really fast and loud clicking). It shows up on the BIOS but nothing in XP. Didn't try anything else.

Any ideas people. Wondering if I can use the PCB of B and put it in A to see if it'd work. Already called couple of data recovery agencies and they responded with $1000-$3000 estimates. Any help would be highly appreciated.

Details from one of the drives:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
300 Gbytes
ST3300820AS
P/N: 9BJ133-305
Firmware: 3.AAE

Date Codes and site codes are diff. Rest of the info here stated is same on both drives.

[pcimage]

It's certainly worth a shot.

[tantrix]

One thing that scared me is the data recovery people said not to take off the PCB board as in some cases it causes to HDD to not function afterwards and data could never be extracted...

[pepe]

well, in your case I think it is pretty safe to try the good PCB on the bad drive.
My only fear is what if the 'internal drive' has some platter damages due to moving around in the case....
So if u start it once, be keen on taking a backup to a new drive instantly.

pepe

[tantrix]

It Worked!!!!!!!!!!!!! And guess what.. it even booted from that drive.. Right into windows.. As it was before..

This is so amazing.. Those Data Recovery people were so full of it!

Backed up my data and everything..

Thanks guys... for the vote of confidence!

[pepe]

Great

This was an easy case, but don't blame thos guys too much, as it could have been much worse if that drive had internal problems as well...

Now backup, backup, backup (i know u did before, but ... )

[tantrix]

I'm going to backup to DVDs too this time..