My Seagate died

Hi all

new member here.

I've got a problem with my main pc drive, it is stopped working.
It is a Seagate ST3500320AS, FW SD15 (i have upgraded to SD1A) 500GB.
The drive now does not detect in BIOS and when I put power, I can hear like it is trying to spin and a quiet bzzz bzzzz bzzzz from inside.

But it doesn't rotate. I did not open the drive because I read it is not very good idea, but I can understand it doesn't rotate.

I am based in Greece and I am very good with about everything, if someone can advice to me.
I consider data on this disk drive very importand for me, and I will go to a company if I have to, but i wanted to know if this fault is maybe fixable by me.

What do gurus think?

Contact Northwind on this forum. He's based in Salonika.

Jon

No DIY if you value your data.

I second Jon about contacting Northwind.

Thanks guys for the suggestion.

Yes we do these all the time with very good success rate, maybe more than 90%. If interested contact to our email address (you can find it by clicking the link at my signature). I suggest you don't fool around with this failure or you can end up with quite a mess. Absolutely no DIY.

Αυτού του τύπου τις βλάβες τις αντιμετωπίζουμε συχνά με πολύ καλά ποσοστά επιτυχίας, ίσως πάνω από 90%. Αν ενδιαφέρεστε, επικοινωνήστε μαζί μας (μπορείτε να βρείτε την email διεύθυνση στο link της υπογραφής μου). Σας προτείνω να μην πειραματιστείτε με αυτή τη βλάβη γιατί θα κάνετε τα πράγματα χειρότερα. Σε καμία περίπτωση δεν μπορείτε να κάνετε κάτι μόνοι σας.

Agree

Northwind will solve your problem.

Not DIY :-(

Forth recommend Northwind.

They can do the job safety, with reasonable price.

Good luck

Listen you are better off. You can get your data or if you try you will loose your data. Your data your choice but Northwind will do this one for you

nickthegeek wrote:I've got a problem with my main pc drive, it is stopped working.
It is a Seagate ST3500320AS, FW SD15 (i have upgraded to SD1A) 500GB.
The drive now does not detect in BIOS and when I put power, I can hear like it is trying to spin and a quiet bzzz bzzzz bzzzz from inside.

But it doesn't rotate.

It could be a stiction fault (heads stuck to platters), but from what I've seen in other threads, Seagates often have problems with seized spindle motors.

I'm not a data recovery professional, though.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions and the advices.
I have contacted northwind as you seem to highly value them and my hard disk is on its way to their place.
Lets hope for the best.

These data is very sentimental for me and i do not risk playing with them, so let's see.

nickthegeek wrote:Thanks everyone for the suggestions and the advices.
I have contacted northwind as you seem to highly value them and my hard disk is on its way to their place.
Lets hope for the best.

These data is very sentimental for me and i do not risk playing with them, so let's see.

Good choice :-)

Wow seems like you do really value the data on this drive.
Someone just called and said he's driving like the wind to bring the drive to our place. Should have it in two hours or so.
Will do our best.

Looking forward to Northwinds post of success......... and a happy outcome. Nice to see the advice taken!

Imaging the drive as we speak.
This was suffering from seized motor and not stiction (as expected).

I had to swap heads too as they seemed a little wobbly and just to make sure I swapped them.

This has a good ~400GB of data in there, it will take a few days to image, but at least i'm getting good data from all heads.

Client will be happy.

northwind wrote:Imaging the drive as we speak.
This was suffering from seized motor and not stiction (as expected).

I had to swap heads too as they seemed a little wobbly and just to make sure I swapped them.

This has a good ~400GB of data in there, it will take a few days to image, but at least i'm getting good data from all heads.

Client will be happy.

Cool!!

Seized as expected :-)

Of the 200-300 drives like this we have seen, only a handful have been stiction.

I second that. I dont know if i've seen more than 5 drives like this with stiction.

Interesting fact is, that ALL i've seen, according to my notes, had also bad heads.

I will try to put client's drive heads to donor drive to see if they were bad. Just out of curiosity. Will report back tomorrow. My stats say that only 30% of seized motors drives had actually bad heads too.

Yep, h1 was bad.

northwind wrote:Imaging the drive as we speak.
This was suffering from seized motor and not stiction (as expected).

I had to swap heads too as they seemed a little wobbly and just to make sure I swapped them.

This has a good ~400GB of data in there, it will take a few days to image, but at least i'm getting good data from all heads.

Client will be happy.

Good ,
did you do a platter swap to another hda unit or you did something else

I'm sorry i am not allowed to give such info in public.

Good job, fast turn around. Sometime there is no substitute for pro work.

I have just in my hands a new disk with all my data inside!!!!

I want to say in public these guys know their job, they are kind, fast and very good.

Sorry but english is not my best language, i just wanted to say thanks to Northwind for excellent work!!!!

Family photos and videos, work documents all saved.

Thanks again and to all people who told me to go to Northwind.
The price was a little high but i do not count it, since my data got back.

:mrgreen: