What causes a drive to show up as "0 bytes"?

[Lord Xeb]

Hello everyone.

I have not posted on here in a while, but anyway straight to the main point.

When a hard drive fails and is seen as 0 bytes by BIOS/UEFI and by an OS, what is the cause of this kind of failure. Is it the a head stack failure of some kind? Logic board failure? Firmware issue? Combination of both?

Any information into further understanding this would be appreciated.

[labtech]

Could be mechanical, firmware or electronics.
Many times certain model drives are known for one of those issues, BUT it all depends on the drive behavior at the end of the day.

[pcimage]

What make and model?

Throw us a bone here!!

[Lord Xeb]

Once I take the customer's machine apart at work, I will find out for you guys.

[chienvisage]

Bone from a different 'animal' but symptoms exactly as described (0 Bytes) as displayed by MHDD (other disk tool 'recognize' it as 32 gig when attached via a USB interface)

NoteBook Drive

Seagate Momentus 5400.6
ST9500325AS (500 G)
Date Code 10184 (2009)
FW 0002SDM1

JIC:

http://www.hddzone.com/faqs.html

Replacement the PCB will not solve the problem below:

1. The drive will power up normally (no ticking noises, errors etc) but will not be recognized by the computer;
2. The drive will power up normally and be recognized correctly but will report a size of 0 bytes;
3. The drive will power up but report SMART errors on boot;

Basically all 3 items listed 'categorize' this drive

As to drive's actual history: Person I know gave it to me to try to recover data. One of those standard 'stopped working' stories

[labtech]

After power on, what does the drive do? Continues to spin? Or spins down?