Advise for hdd repair/recovery in Spain

[angel6700]

Hello,

I have a problem with a hard disk:
Seagate ST3250310AS.

I suddenly was not detected by BIOS (neither in other computers).
The last time it worked it was been defragmented (the data partition). I left during the night and in the mornig I found the screen totally black. A reboot show no disk in the bios...

I ordered a spare pcb from internet, that is exactly the same. The I swaped them but with the same result... Ok really, now the HD is detected sometimes in BIOS, but cannot access the data.

A co/worker, helped me and we swapped the bios chip, but also it did not worked.

So, any advise? I think I need an expert working on the drive, I read here that pcimage has a lot of experience, so I asked for a quotation. But It is in UK, and I live in Spain, so, Anyone knows somewere to send the hdd in spain (Valencia region is prefered)?


Thanks in advance.

[northwind]

A co/worker, helped me and we swapped the bios chip, but also it did not worked.

Meaning?
You should give more details as to how drive behaves at each and every condition.
"Does not work" may have a billion different meanings.

[angel6700]

Hello,

Thank you for your interest. I will try to explain better:
Now, when I power on the computer it takes, something like 10 seconds to show in BIOS start-up the IDE/SATA peripherals. Also, only half of the times the drive is detected.

This is the information of the HDD and PCB:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB ST3250310AS
P/N: 9EU132-305
firmware 3.AAC
site code: WU
CHIP: TTB5041A0

TVS diodes are OK.

The drive, always spin up, without noticeable noises.
The drive has 2 primary partitions and 1 extended with 2 logical partitions inside.

I'm trying to rescue booting with a linux distribution called SystemRescueCD.
Most of the times a fdisk -l command shows the partition table (the rest, connection to drive seems to be lost).

I cannot mount the drive.
I have made an image with ddrescue to work only with the image, but during the process (almost 2 days) it detected so many errors, than I cannot find useful data in the image.

If you can recommend me any diagnostics, I can follow. What information is important?

Thanks again and best regards.

[northwind]

Hi

I think you have followed the right track here by using ddrescue to image your drive.
As this has failed, there aren't many things you can do. The errors produced during ddrescue imaging can be caused by a weak/failing/failed head (this model uses 2 heads, so it is unlikely I think, but anyway it is not DIY) or degradation of media, or some other internal firmware failure which can only be discovered after a thorough evaluation by someone with the right equipment and lot of knowledge.

I suggest you follow the pro path and contact someone in your area. There is pclab who is in Portugal and ofcourse you can trust pcimage as well.

[BlackST]

Most probably - unless you have already toasted the disk with 2day-beating it to death...