Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
April 3rd, 2014, 10:52
Seagate 7200.11
750 GB
ST3750330AS
P/N: 9BX156-568
FW: SD35
Data is important, but not crucial enough to send off for professional service.
A customer brought this HDD to me and told me it had fallen from a desk. I powered it on and it was making a grunting noise, but would not spin. I did some research and found that it is a common problem for the spindle to fail when these Seagate drives are dropped. I carefully opened to inspect it. I found the heads parked in their normal position, but the platters were completely stuck. I used the brute force method to free the platters, and after a while the platters started to move freely again.
I reassembled the drive and powered it on. It spun up this time, but was clicking slightly, but not badly and not in any pattern. It would eventually be recognized by BIOS, but it took a few minutes. Windows (kind of) sees it. I shows in My Computer as a drive, but when I click it, it locks up my computer. Disk Management sees it as the proper size, but with no drive letter. It will not allow me to assign a drive letter to it. I ran SeaTools for DOS and it reported a bunch of bad sectors, but could not repair them.
I assume I have bad heads, and I am guessing the next step would be to try to source a donor drive to remove the heads from. I have access to head swap tools, so the swap job shouldn't be all that hard. But the donor drives I am finding are $150-$250. Before I spend that kind of money, can anyone advise me if a head swap is indeed the next logical step. Also, must I get the heads from the EXACT same drive? Same firmware and everything? I ask this because some other donors with slightly different FW are much cheaper.
April 3rd, 2014, 14:06
Your problem is likely a combination of motor and heads with many other small other factors that may have an effect on drive operation once the two main issues are resolved first.
If data is not important, let the drive go. The success to failure ratio is not favorable and the cost is ridiculous as you may need more than one part JUST to try all of this out.
April 3rd, 2014, 15:46
Data is not $2000 important, but I would consider it $300 important. I am willing to spend a little money to get it working.
April 3rd, 2014, 16:05
When you say, "brute force", what does that mean? Can you confirm that you did not attempt anything that would affect the platter alignment, touch the platters or do it outside a clean room? Either way, it is unlikely that you will be able to recover the data on your own and will likely break your budget trying.
Sorry to say, but you might just have to walk away from this one.
April 3rd, 2014, 16:39
lcoughey wrote:When you say, "brute force", what does that mean? Can you confirm that you did not attempt anything that would affect the platter alignment, touch the platters or do it outside a clean room? Either way, it is unlikely that you will be able to recover the data on your own and will likely break your budget trying.
Sorry to say, but you might just have to walk away from this one.
It was opened in a "clean box" and by brute force I mean I rotated the spindle by hand counter-clockwise until it felt like it was free to spin, then closed it up and powered it on. Platters were not touched, only the center spindle. I am willing to spend money on a head swap, if anyone can help me confirm it is indeed a head problem. I have successfully swapped heads on other drives before, but never with multiple platters. I have a head comb to help extract it, but have not spent the $200 on a donor drive yet. Not sure if I should...
A few more details : The drive never spins down, unless the computer is turned off. A few times disk management reported the correct size, but it has also reported the size as 0MB and 23PB.
April 4th, 2014, 10:50
Today when powering on the drive, BIOS recognizes it but says there is an error. It reports the drive as 0MB. LBA=0
Is the firmware damaged?
April 4th, 2014, 11:03
The firmware is likely not read properly because it is read (sometimes not read) inconsistently due to likely inconsistent RPMs. The motor seems damaged.
If you want further confirmation one way or another, at least power the drive on and try to get a terminal output.
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