Search For Local HDD Guru

[sinosudial]

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if there were any HDD gurus near Orlando, FL that could diagnose and possibly repair my drive or recover the data from it. Like many others, I restarted my computer, and then it wouldn't come back up. The BIOS doesn't detect it; I get a message saying there's no NTLDR found; I tried putting it in a different computer, but that had no effect. I hear the drive spinning up. Once it reaches it stable speed, the clicking begins. It's not a rapid clicking, but it's consistent.

I've been reading through as much as I can on the forum about attempting to diagnose and repair it myself, but frankly, I get it. I get that there's a very, very good chance that I can't do anything about it without damaging the drive further. I already bought a replacement PCB, before I found this forum, but I'm definitely not going to attempt the swap.

So, back to my original question. Is there anyone near to me that could do it?

Thanks.

[networkpc3000]

hi,
what's the model of your drive? it looks no the PCB problem. perhaps it got head crashed or something.

[sinosudial]

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10
S/N 9QF77XE
ST3320620AS
P/N 9BJ14G-033
Firmware 3.ADG
Date Code 08125
Site Code TK

[BlackST]

Wonderful news: there is a valuable old member of this forum right there: PM to quasimodo.

[sinosudial]

So, I received the new PCB in the mail and, with my eagerness to save a buck and my impatience regarding recovering my data, I decided to swap it out to see if it would work. Much to my relief and amazement, it worked! I've copied all of my data to another drive and am in the clear. All the experts kept saying the heads were damaged, which I suppose they still could be. However, I got my data and that's really all I wanted.

Thanks to pcbsolutions for the new PCB!

[quasimodo]

Well it's almost impossible to diagnose if it's a head problem or something else, without running some diagnostics on the drive. You certainly got lucky with the pcb swap, but I am happy to hear that you where able to recovery your data. Great job

[Russwinters]

MCU and/or RW channel failure.

At first glance it is tricky to tell the difference between head/preamp damage and RW/MCU damage most of the time it will click very similar.

Need extra attention to figure it out, or luck of the draw!



Regards,