Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB - Spins but isn't recognised?

[Smi]

Hi all,

So, I was testing a 2.5" drive for my dad -which involved taking my own out of my caddy, something I've done many times.

Except this time, I plugged my own drive back in (the Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB mentioned above) and nothing, nada, diddly squat. It spins up but I couldn't get it to be read at all. It did briefly appear as a device, before making a few squeaking noises, and now won't show up at all.

I've taken it to work (as I am an IT Technician, we've got other bits of equipment to test this stuff) however in our test rig it shows up as "Unknown" in the BIOS, on various PCs with Gparted it isn't recognised as a drive and Dell's bios diagnostics for hard drives says it didn't exist.
It does however spin up okay and doesn't click, tick or otherwise make any other "bad" noises - other than the brief aforementioned squeak, which it hasn't made since.

Any clues, guys? I've got no data on it I'm interested in restoring (it is yet to be homed in a media PC) - I just want it working. I picked it up for a tenner brand new so I'm a bit gutted if it's dead as it'll cost considerably more than that to replace! Sadly it came from an external caddy so no warranty valid still...

Thanks in advance for any help!

Mark

[zebong]

It look ´s that you disk have internal problems.

if you do not need the data, trash, and buy a new one.

[Smi]

I've been trying to access the drive via serial cable to the pins on the back (as with the 7200.11 bsy fault - figure it was worth a look!) but I can only get gibberish out of the terminal.

Do I still need the TTL converter chip? I'm going straight-through serial at the moment...

The thing is - I can hear the drive spin up, the heads do the calibration movement, and it falls quiet (still spinning)
No click of death, no awful noise, I'm fairly sure it must be saveable...

[sathyan]

You should not connect it directly to the serial port, you need buy a rs232-ttl convertor. or make one as shown below

http://hddguru.com/articles/2005.10.01- ... schematic/

and post what you see on the terminal

[warriordeluxe]

Hi there,

I found this thread, because I have the same problem. My machine crashed (I think it doesn't have something to do with hdd, because that happened earlier too) and after a reboot my drive wasn't recognized anymore. It is a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 250GB. gparted can't find the device, windows can't find the device and my mac tells me it is a 1TB drive from a unknown supplier.

Did you work it out for your drive?

I thought maybe it is enough to buy a headcrashed/used drive of the same model and replace the circuit board
Any chance to make this work again?

cheers and thank you

[labtech]

Basic PCB swap will not work.

I assume you read the entire thread, so have you looked into a terminal set up?

These drives typically do not have PCB issues. They have internal mechanical issues.
Difficult family drive to recover as it is very sensitive to media damage.

Additionally, parts compatibility is a major issue that most people do not understand how to address.

Not DIY.

Need professional help if the data is worth the money. Choose wisely where you are sending the drive if choosing to do so.

[warriordeluxe]

Hi,

thanks for your reply!

yes, I have seen the hint with the terminal access. For now I don't have the setup to connect (RS Cable, USB RS Port and Converter) and because I'm new to this topic (hdd recovery), I don't know if it's possible to fix it with the help of the terminal or which information you can get out of it.

I think the PCB could be damaged because the display of the vendor is wrong on my mac and there are no "noises of death". And I can't imagine the vendor id is stored on the mechanical parts.

Why is it so difficult to swap the PCB?

How much at least or in average do I need to spent to get professional help?

thanks!

cheers,
Nik

[sathyan]

I don't know if it's possible to fix it with the help of the terminal or which information you can get out of it.

The terminal report will give some indication related to the problem of your drive. (and not to fix it)
It tells the current status of the drive (to try to help make proper diagnosis of the problem)

I think the PCB could be damaged because the display of the vendor is wrong on my mac and there are no "noises of death". And I can't imagine the vendor id is stored on the mechanical parts.

Why is it so difficult to swap the PCB?

You will have to swap the rom form the original PCB to the other PCB before swapping


If you have important data , its not worth taking DIY risk,as Labtech suggested .
DIY without proper tools and knowledge on Drives with important data is not advised, as chances of degrading the drive is more ,making recovery by a pro later costly or even not possible.