Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
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HDD Not spining

December 29th, 2010, 8:48

Hi All,

I have a Seagate HDD with this Model NO ST3160212AS, I disconnected it from a PC and trying to reconnect it and it stop working. When I tried to attach it to a tool, it keeps on beeping and I had to off it.

When I powered it, it does not show any sign of working. Can it be the PCB and any idea of how I can get the data out or get the donor PCB?

Thanks to all in advance

Re: HDD Not spining

December 29th, 2010, 11:14

Seems more motor seizure or head stiction...

Re: HDD Not spining

December 29th, 2010, 16:16

If your drive is powered from the USB port, try a Y-cable. This will pick up power from two USB ports.

Otherwise, if the failure to spin up is due to stiction, and if you don't wish to pay the price of professional data recovery, then a little percussive maintenance may dislodge the stuck heads just enough for the motor to overcome the adhesion.

See this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives

This thread may interest you (it has a couple of success stories):
samsung-portable-500gb-dead-t14351.html#p99445

See the warnings on page 5 of the following article.

Disk Drive Science (Steve Legg):
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/7803/5/DiskD ... e_copy.pdf

Here are photos of what can go wrong:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=15911#p105001

Here are some sound samples from failed drives:
http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php
http://web.archive.org/web/200510160107 ... enDocument

Re: HDD Not spining

December 29th, 2010, 18:33

fzabkar wrote:If your drive is powered from the USB port, try a Y-cable. This will pick up power from two USB ports.


Sure. But it will work only when USBs will have also the +12 required by a ST3160xxxx. :lol:
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