Dead Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001-1CH166 - Which way to go?

[Dan-Ger]

Hi folks,

I have a drive as stated in the threadtitle. It died during some intensive virusscanning for 8 hours, was in PC, not dropped, not shaken (maybe stirred ) ...
It is recognised in the BIOS, but not the OS itself, neither Win7 nor Linux, tested with 2 PCs, using internal SATA and 2 different USB-Dockingstations.

Every time the drive spins up, it does two "chirps", little pause, another chirp and then spins down.
I have a sound-recording, it this could be usefull to post.
At some powerons (had it 4 times in aprox. 25 Powerups), there is a loud "beep" instead (or parallel) to the third chirp.

Tests in Seatols were not succesfull (except the little self test, which ended "green" ).
SeaTools Test Code: DC65E0C9 - nothing to find in the Internet.

I used HDD Sentinel, which reported failure in ATA Control-Byte and ATA-Checksum.

I tried MHDD, getting this output when ID'ing the drive:

þ Smart -> ATT
Getting SMART attributes... Error: device error

WARNING: SET MULTIPLE command aborted.
ST3000DM001-1CH166 LBA:268,435,455
SN:Z1F0YZ4B FW:CC43 Size = 131071MB
To see enhanced information, use command EID <SHIFT+F2>
Init drive: [RECAL]
RECAL FAIL

WARNING: SET MULTIPLE command aborted.
ST3000DM001-1CH166 LBA:268,435,455
SN:Z1F0YZ4B FW:CC43
Supports: LBA48 HPA DLMC LBA DMA (UDMA6,MWDMA2)
SMART: Enabled SelfTest: Supported ErrorLog: Supported
Security: high, OFF. Size = 131071MB

So, could some experts try to point me which direction to go in order to access my data on the drive (drive has warranty, but does not matter, I want the data )?

Would you guess that problem is some kind of mechanical or rather Firmware/PCB?
I don't have a TTL-RS232-Adapter yet, ordered one on ebay today - if this could be usefull for testing with special commands?
I also would not hesitate to buy a Donor-PCB (with the changed ID-Chip from my original PCB, found some guys from Canada to do this), if there is a chance, that this will help.

Something I can test/send you, in order to give some advice?

Thanks for reading (and helping I hope),

Greetings from Germany
Daniel

[lcoughey]

If you want your data back without risk of losing it all, send it to a professional data recovery lab who can properly diagnose and recover your data. Anything you try, including powering the drive on, can be, and likely is, causing further damage.

[labtech]

Try to put it on the fridge.
It works all the time.

On a serious note:
I don't care if I lose business or not. 50-500 drives in the fridge is not going to make or break this industry.
What I care about is getting a headache when I see a frozen drive and customer losing data based on misunderstood and misapplied information, techniques, procedures, whatever you want to call it.

It is not good advice.

If you truly believe it is working as often as you think, then take any modern working drive and throw it in the fridge for a few good hours. Then power it on. I am pretty sure the data will not be accessible.

Same with the PCB swap: try it yourself. Take a two of each kind of a variety of functional drives and swap PCBs. You will see that data will not be accessible most of the time.

For your own experience and development in this field, experience a little rather than just watch videos. Then you will have a better understanding and value the type of advice given in a different light.

[labtech]

This guy was just trolling the forum and posting stuff he knew would push peoples anoyance button

I realize, waste of time... but other new (bies) people may be reading based on search hits.

Here is an example of drive received this morning with customer's own notes:
Problem Details: Laptop dropped 1 meter above the ground. After this accident, hard drive has been making mechanical noises and does not mount. Have tried freezing it inside two plastic bags for data retrieval, but without luck.

[Frozwire]

For your own experience and development in this field, experience a little rather than just watch videos. Then you will have a better understanding and value the type of advice given in a different light.

well said.