Hey guys, just joined today

I have an annoying problem. I replaced my vaio's hdd with an ssd. Figured that i could use the hdd as an external hdd. I had a gutted portable drive from before, so i hooked the hdd up to the little usb circuit board. It worked, no problems whatsoever. I copied some data and backed some things up. The next time I plugged it in, it boots up, I can hear it spinning. Windows 7 sees it and installs drivers. Then, the problems start. I can't access the drive. I see it in My computer, but when I try to open it or format it, it just hangs and nothing happens. I tried to access the drive from linux, but no deal, same thing. I tried adding it as a slave drive on my desktop, still doesn't work. Is it dead? There is no important data on it so data recovery is not a concern. I just want to reformat it and use it as a data drive.

I came across the hdd llf tool after some searching. Would it be a good idea to run it on the hdd? I am out of ideas, any help would be appreciated.

Oh, I know next to nothing about hdds other than that they have spinning platters...

Thanks!!

anyone?

I can hear the drive spinning, but I can't hear the head seeking like you normally would. Do you think the head mechanism is damaged or maybe it is a firmware corruption or something?

@sonyvaio:

You seem to be wondering why you didn't get any replies - I didn't reply earlier, since although it's clear you're trying to help, comments like "still doesn't work" are much too vague for me (and probably for other readers) to even guess at the problem, or whether your tests were done correctly. Don't forget that we can't see your drive, or what keys you pressed, or hear what sounds it is making etc. - your description is all we have to use, unless someone wants to try to guide you step-by-step through diagnosis (which isn't me, in this case).

Since you've now tried it in (at least) 2 different systems, then it seems likely that the disk has a fault. The disk is spinning so it's unlikely to be a PCB problem (typically). That means that whatever else the problem is, it's almost certainly not a DIY problem that you'll solve.

With that disk in your desktop (and preferably any other disks temporarily disconnected), further diagnosis could be attempted in a few different ways e.g. using an MHDD boot CD to see how the disk responds to an ID command, and then possibly to other commands (depending on how it behaves) - but until the disk is recognised by a normal OS, you won't manage to reformat it for further use. Therefore such attempts at further diagnosis have little real benefit since they won't fix anything, and you don't need to give the answers to a DR company to discuss the liklihood of getting any data off the disk, and any repairs needed to that disk will probably cost more than just buying another equivalent disk.

And even if you did get it repaired, would you want to use a disk again, if there is any suspicion that it could not be relied upon? Despite using backups, I would rather not have the inconvenience of a disk failure, if I can avoid tempting fate by using suspect hardware.

I realise that's probably not what you wanted to hear. Feel free to wait for another reader to come along and say something different.

@Vulcan:

Hey, thanks for replying. Yeah I suppose its hard to tell exactly what is wrong with my drive without having it in front of you . I figured that at this point fixing it was too much trouble anyways and that it probably would just be cheaper to get another drive. I wasn't too worried about getting it back up and running, just thought I might as well give it a try . Actually this gives me an excuse to get a bigger and better drive now, maybe one of those TB drives or maybe even a bigger ssd . Thanks for trying to help though!