Hello, I have a Seagate 7200.8 300gb hard drive that was enclosed in an external case (it was bought that way). It worked for about a year and then it completely stopped working. No strange noise, no corrupted files etc, it was as if it just wasn't plugged in. I took it out of the hard drive enclosure and hooked it directly to my computer via the IDE cable. I tried the different jumper settings cable select, etc, and the BIOS won't recognize the drive. The board on the drive appears to be okay. there aren't any obvious burnt components (none that I can see)

Is this drive salvageable? What could I do to troubleshoot it further? I don't have much money to spend.. and I would like to recover some of the data.. or possibly even fix it. Any input would be appreciated!

I attached pictures of the front and back of pcb board.

Send it to Data Recovery company if you want your data, not for DIY job.

How much can you spend (max) and where are you?

I have several drives from that series and I wouldn't recommend them. They are my lab rats for experiments. Let me guess, your drive was made in China? Regrettably, there are no end user procedures that you can follow to recover this drive. You are looking at probably electronics repair and potentially system area repair. That's a level 3 problem for our company. We expect users and IT consultants to give up at level 1.

Here is what you can tell us:

1. Is the drive spinning if you apply power with no data cable connected and the drive is in Master mode. If no, probably an electronics problem. That white circle looks suspicious.
2. If you set it as slave and connect to another master, does the BIOS see it? If yes, you may be lucky. If no, you are done.

Further diagnostic requires specialized equipment. Board replacement would require an exact match of firmware number and the same main chip (you will have ST and Agere as options). ROM must also match. Data recovery companies have equipment that allows us to bend these rules, by the way.

Blindly swapping the boards can be dangerous if there is damage to the heads stack.

In short, if you do this yourself, you will experience quite of bit of frustration trying to find the exact parts and you'll need to learn at the least the basics of using a multimeter. Otherwise, you are looking at pretty high cost of getting this fixed.

Good luck.

Thank you for your replies!
I went ahead and tested the drive again. I disconnected all hard drives from my computer, and plugged my troubled drive as master. BIOS froze at the logo screen. I tried as Cable select. Froze at BIOS screen. I tried as slave paired with a working hard drive as master. Froze at BIOS screen. I went ahead and unplugged the IDE cable, but left the power cable plugged in with jumper set to master. No sound coming from hard drive. I actually went and used a stethoscope and tried to listen and see if I could hear anything faintly. When power went on and off I barely heard a faint click or pop noise, but it didn't sound mechanical, it sounded more like what you would hear when a component got a current... This drive also showed no progressive signs of failing.. it just one day worked, the next day didn't. No data loss.

So at this point it would almost definitely seem as though my board failed somehow, but the inner mechanics are in good shape? Is there a component that would blow in a power surge more likely than another? Like a fuse or transistor etc that would condition voltage? One that wouldn't necessarily be obvious to the naked eye? I do own a multimeter and am familiar with basic electronics and basic soldering etc. That white circle on the underside of the board appears to be an adhesive and not a burn mark.. at least that's what I would guess it to be.

I don't have more than say 20 bucks to spend on this, and the data isn't seriously important, I would just like to salvage it if possible.. more on the level of a hobby. And to learn. So even if attempting to fix this drive screws it up even more, it would be worth it to me to try rather than just throwing the drive out. I love a challenge.. even the ones that make me want to rip my own hair out.

With that said, any suggestions? Thanks in advance for any help or information etc you can give me! It's much appreciated!

The drive has a pcb problem for fixing it you will have to replace its pcb if required you can PM me .