Hi everyone,

I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 (ST31000528AS) hard drive which spins up, I can hear it being accessed for a short time, before the system BSODs and the hard drive disappears from the BIOS. If the drive/computer is power cycled, this behaviour will repeat. This is also true for attaching it to another computer, if any access attempt to the hard drive, after a very short time, the drive becomes inaccessible including SMART data. I originally thought it might be the controller of the hard drive and I had another hard drive of the same model, so I switched the firmware ICs between the controller boards, but this has made no difference overall. The firmware version on the hard drive is CC38. This hard drive did have a SMART failure due to reallocated sectors and was about to be replaced.

Main reason for not taking this to a professional is cost, the data on it isn't hugely important, but I would like to recover it if possible. I've heard about people attaching a USB-Serial Converter to the 4 2mm pitch pins at the back of the hard drive and entering commands to help get the drive going, is that possible with this hard drive? If so, what are the IO voltage levels needed? Is there anything else I can try? After data recovery operations, this hard drive is going to be junked.

Thank you for reading,
Crenn

Try simple data recovery software for example DMDE. It simple and efficient. Make sure you keep your hard drive cooled down. Seagate heads like to fail when drives gets hot. Is the hard drive getting offline `freeze` and never become readable?

_________________
Recuperacion De Datos Dominican Republic

+1 for stop relocation and clone.

_________________
Data Recovery Pakistan