Hi every1! I have ST31000340AS 1TB. Age - about 1 year. Recently i came home, tried to turn on my pc and it hung at POST. Well, I waited til something happens - it was not detected, though pc continued loading (i have os installed on a different HDD) after some 40-50 seconds.
I`ve checked if it was seen by windows device manager - nope. Downloaded SeaTools, and guess what.. It showed me that I have 4 HDDs (yeah, i have them, 4 all in all, WD as a system disk, two old ST3200827AS 200G and this ST31000340AS), but what was interesting - it showed me this - WD, and THREE identical ST3200827AS, two of them have S/N 4ND28WD9, and the fourth - 4ND280SG, firmware`s 3.AAE....
As i unplugged it and tried to run the test again - it showed me the same 4 HDDs, though only 3 were connected...
The thing is I could send it to hell, go get the new one and avoid bothering you, but it still has some 700 gigs of working data collected for 6 years on it and don`t want to lose it at all. Any thoughts?

Your drive may be a victim of the 7200.11 BSY bug.

If so, then see this thread for an easy DIY fix:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/ATA-and-Se ... 036#M19464

Here is the appropriate Seagate tech bulletin:
http://www.expreview.com/img/topic/seag ... Update.pdf

I suggest you first contact Seagate and ask whether your drive qualifies for free data recovery.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

damn on seagate, one more victim

Thanks, man! BTW, is there any option like "go buy the same new model, and simply replace the PCB", if the issue is in the electronics part? Could it be easier? And I didn`t get one thing - they say I`ll need to kinda format it, restore the partition. Will it affect the data? or just recreate the partition, boot sector or whats there, without touching it?

If the drive spins up, then it is most likely not a PCB problem. Otherwise, when replacing the PCB you need to transfer the 8-pin serial EEPROM chip from patient to donor. This chip stores unique, drive specific calibration data.

These URLs should help you identify the components:

http://hddscan.com/doc/HDD_from_inside.html
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/HDD_ICs.txt
http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/TVS_diodes.txt

This vendor offers a board for US$40 plus $10 for a ROM transfer:
http://www.onepcbsolution.com

Here is another:
http://www.hdd-parts.com/seagate-barrac ... -sata.html

As for your partition question, the procedure doesn't touch your data. The "partition" being referred to is in a reserved area on the platters.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thank you, fzabkar, veryyyyyy much! Recently I did all the stuff, it worked properly and now I`m happy =))) Thanks a lot.