I need help diagnosing new symptoms on a failed drive (Seagate ST3320620A from Maxtor external, 320gb). The drive suffered a bearing failure, most likely due to heat, and I need to retrieve data.

I've successfully free'd the seized spindle using a makeshift clean room (bathroom) and home-made tools. The hard drive spins up quickly to full speed, pauses for a few seconds, and then the trouble begins:

First it makes a boink sound (like a marble dropping), then proceeds to make slow clicks (8-10 clicks), about 1 per second. It then pauses for a few seconds and repeats the same sequence of sounds. My research tells me it is seeking track 0.

Other Notes: Drive is IDE, I can not connect to it on IDE interface, or using USB to IDE connector. I can not see it in Disk Management. Also does not show up in Seatools. Platters are clean, data should still be intact.

So where I need help is what to do next, I'm hoping for suggestion on diagnosing the PCB and the heads?

Thanks.

If you haven't already completely destroyed it (and if it wasn't already destroyed when you started working on it), your only hope will be a data recovery professional. Keep in mind they will likely charge you 2x-10x what a normal quote would have been since you have already been messing with it.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Out of curiosity, what is a "makeshift clean room (bathroom)" ?

Think he took shower and steamed the room clean.

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Iorana Haraharaini

yeah....steam doesn't work.

State of the art clean room technology.

with shower in it . lol .

and you can check also the thermal stress...

the top right looks like a car stereo, you can listen to your favorite tracks while recovering data! Thats style!