Need help diagnosing hard drive problem

[peepdog]

A friend of mine had an old Dell PC in which the hard drive suddenly stopped working. The BIOS wouldn't detect it in the Dell machine. I took the HDD out and hooked it up to my PC. At first, the BIOS would not recognize it, but then after a couple tries, the BIOS did see it, but neither Windows or Linux would (neither OS would complete startup).

I thought it might be the circuit board, so I got the same model HDD off of ebay (same model, P/N, Firmware, numbers on the circuit board's chip, etc). It arrived today and I swapped the circuit boards, but no change. The old drive still didn't work with the new board, and the new drive works with the old board.

I'm not sure where to go from here. When the drive is hooked up, I don't hear any clicking, and I can feel the drive spinning and vibrating. I though about swapping the platters, but when I read up on it, it sounded pretty difficult to do without damaging the platter.

Is there something else I can check for or try switching out in order to get the drive to work again? There's a lot of important information on the drive that my friend really needs.

Any help would be appreciated.

The drive is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, Model ST380011A, P/N 9W2003-633, Firmware 8.16.

Thanks in advance!

[harddrivespecialist]

Refer to a pro before your problem become worth.

[loki]

I agree seek out a pro before you ruin any chances of getting the data back.
know your limitations & never experiment with users data

Loki

[fzabkar]

The following demoware can repair your drive in some cases, although probably not in yours. It also produces a DIAGNOSIS.TXT file that may have some useful information:
http://www.salvationdata.com/blog/seaga ... repair-50/
http://www.salvationdata.com/downloads/ ... K7DEMO.zip

[jono-ats]

Swapping platters on anything other than a drive with a defective motor / bearing is never a good idea. (I guess this "tip" is from the same "book" with the "hammer" and "freezer trick"?)

This drive was probably may in China (site code WU) and most likely has a heads / media issue. Unless you are "lucky" and fzarbar's suggestion works for you, pro intervention is needed to recover the data.

[BlackST]

According to the symptom, to me the problem is elsewhere unless it has been dropped. Assuming it's not completely toast (... at least 50%), with some "black magic" it is possible to harmlessly and safely get data out. But it depends if the drive wants to know me personally