Seagate Momentus 7200.4 just beeps, doesn't spin up

[tptyamaha]

Laptop stopped working and then would not reboot. There was just this beeping sound about every second. Not a bios beep code I could find. So I removed hard drive and hooked it up to external adapter and realized that it was the hard drive beeping.

My internet research suggests this is a job for data recovery service. What is a fair price range for this fix? It sounds like the spindle has seized or the heads themselves. Also, what is the probability of most data that I want being able to be recovered?

Just trying to determine if this something worth pursuing or not. (My teenage son's laptop)

Thank you very much for your input.

[sathyan]

Depending upon the problem, the price will vary.
Stiction problem or seized spindal motor seems to be the issue.
Get an evaluation done by a good DR company, some wont charge for evaluation.
Data recovery from such drives ,if not tampered with , will be quite successful.

[jono-ats]

Many pros on this board can help you with your recovery.

Jon

[es9j4]

Hi,
I had the same problem with this (exactly ST95000420ASG) drive. Switched the laptop into standby, tried to resume after about 10 minutes, windows appeared back but when I clicked something, the system froze. There was some beeping and I also realized the HDD was not spinning. The same after powering the laptop off/on, so it was obvious that HDD stopped working. I knew something about head stiction problems and was quite sure it's just this case, but there was a lot of important accounting data on the drive that I hadn't backed up for more than one year, so I didn't want to risk damaging the platters by opening the drive outside of clean environment.
I took the drive to a local DR company for diagnosis. They said the spindle was seized, heads damaged and they should be able to recover 80% of data for $600. I didn't believe them, because the damage didn't match the situation in which the drive failed. But the data was worth that price, so I agreed. They recovered more than 99% of data, in fact everything that was important.
When I took the faulty drive back, I wanted to see where the actual problem was, so I opened it, and found out that the head stack was not there. I don't know whether they had to replace my head stack by some known-good one and then took it out, or they just kept my head stack as a spare part However the spindle rotates freely, and when I plug the power in, it spins up without any unusual noise, so I still think that was just a stiction problem ..

[pcimage]

Could be one of three things:

Stiction (most likely) - heads stuck over platter
Heads mashed into ramp (less likely)
Seized motor (very unlikely)

If it's stiction it shouldn't be too expensive, unless the heads are damaged.

[tptyamaha]

Thank you to all. I think I will check out datasaversllc.com That is pretty close to me.