Lacie Rikiki, Seagate momentus 500gb, 5400.6 ST9500325AS

[Orhan]

Lacie Rikiki Seagate momentus 500gb, 5400.6 ST9500325AS, 100536286 not recognized

Dear All,

A week ago we had a power outage in my home after that I found out that my external hard drive was not being recognized by my laptop. I tried to
plug in other laptops and computers but it was not recognized in there too. I installed a ubuntu linux on a usb stick and boot up my laptop but
it was not recognized again.
When I plugin I hear the drive spinning and the light works but is not recognized by the BIOS or windows. The drive does not make clicking sounds. I bought another enclosure with a cable and put the disk in there but that did not work either, it did however recognized it as a 'usb to ata/atapi bridge' but did nothing with it. Different cables also did not work. The free versions of recovery softwares could also not see the drive including the seatools software of seagate itself.

I googled for a solution and read about PCB, firmware and not working heads etc. In one dutch forum I read that seagate drives are notorious for
firmware failings. In there someone suggested this company http://onepcbsolution.com/ where you have to send the PCB and they send you new one
with a clean firmware.

So Im asking for your expert opinion, could this work (Sending the PCB to this company)? Bear in mind Im not
a recovery specialist nor an elecrical engineer although a software test engineer but that's a different kind of engineering.

thanks in advance

Orhan

[Martin]

...
So Im asking for your expert opinion, could this work (Sending the PCB to this company)?
.....

Did you try to connect your drive to another PC using standard SATA port? Does the drive is recognizing in BIOS somehow? If yes, so sending out the PCB to change for new one have no sense. I do not reject a PCB problem, but problems with firmware (diskware) are more common for these drives.

[Orhan]

I did connect it to a pc with a usb port, but is was an old pc with windows XP on it, the pc had IDE ports. It did not recognize. I have to find a pc with SATA ports on the motherboard and try it again this time connecting directly to the motherboard.

Is it true that a part of the firmware is on the PCB and that it makes the motor spin and the head work?

[fzabkar]

Is it true that a part of the firmware is on the PCB and that it makes the motor spin and the head work?

Yes. If the motor does not spin and the heads do not read, then there would be no way to retrieve the firmware from the platters.

[Orhan]

Fzabkar, in my case I hear the motor spinning when I plugin the USB of the hard drive and the light is also on and it keeps spinning but is does nothing and is not recognized at all. It is like it does not read.
The only thing I did that fateful day was removing a few files, I left the drive coupled on the laptop. The next day I remember my brother changed a couple of bulbs so we had to turn the electricity off for an hour. That night I noticed the drive was not recognized anymore.

[fzabkar]

Use a TTL adapter to obtain a terminal log from the drive.

[Martin]

Is it true that a part of the firmware is on the PCB and that it makes the motor spin and the head work?

It is like start part of microprogram (firmware), it is contained in ROM IC, very important, but it is enough rare situation when ROM content or ROM IC is damaged. So first, of course, it is PCB problem has to be suspected, but for these drives diskware problem is more common situation (because of though relation with drives' physical conditions).

[Orhan]

My knowledge with terminal logs and adapters is unfortunately zero. I dont know whether it is wise for me to mess with the drive's electronics.