I'm probably the first person on this board to suffer a HD crash. There is data valuable to my better half that I would like to recover, but not so valuable that I'm willing to spend $500 (or more) to send it to a HD Recovery Company.

I am a EE, but my knowledge of HD's is limited and certainly not my specialty. However, I do spend time designing and debugging hardware in the computer industry. Meaning, I can talk intelligently, but am fully capable of making stupid decisions. I also have access to soldering equipment, but if I have to remove and replace a 176 pin QFP.... wel, let's just say I solder like and engineer.

The drive is:
DiamondMax Plus 45 7200RPM
30.7GB AT
S/N: F400XWWC
Model: 53073H4
HDA: 04A
PCBA: 03A
Unique: 11A
Code: JAC61HUQ

Logic Board is the Nebula 301334101

Symptoms:
This was a sudden failure with no warning. The BIOS detects the drive properly and the drive spins up normally without any clicking. During boot, communication with the drive fails and an HD Error is generated.

What I've done:
Maxblast was able to detect the drive, but was not able to repair the damage. This was the only software that's been able to detect the presence of the drive. Within Maxblast, there is the option to repair. Maxblast goes off and claims to repair, but the drive still fails Maxblast checks. Not sure what their defintion of repair is.

I downloaded numerous DOS based HD recovery software that guarantees it can recover a drive even if the MLB is bad, etc... None of them have been able to detect the presence of the drive.

Theories:
I believe the BIOS detects the drive because that information is contained in memory on the logic board. Likely, it's programmed in ROM on the Lucent 1181K DSP. I don't believe that the PC is receiving any data pulled from the platters. Based on the fact that the BIOS detects the drive and the motor spins, I'm not inclined to believe there is a catastrophic failure of the logic board since there's really not a lot else on the logic board. I could be wrong....

My fear is that the preamp has gone bad. I believe that's located inside the HD (the last place on earth I want to go). It would seem to fit my scenario.

An easy test would be to swap logic boards with a known good, but finding a known good is proving to be troublesome. I did find a 30.7GB Maxtor drive and ordered it, but as luck would have it, the logic board is different (FISH'N M16) despite the date codes only being 2 months apart. Many of the devices are the same, so if I suspect a device failure, it's possible that I now have spare parts. There are some differences that I cannot account for since finding spec's on all of the devices is proving difficult.

Any thoughtful help is appreciated. Perhaps I'll get lucky and somebody has experienced the exact same scenario.

Maxblast isn't the utility to repair Maxtor drives. PowerMax is the right choice. It's available as a bootable CD ISO file.
Run that first and look if it gives an error code.

Regards,
weaker

I misspoke. It was the Powermax utility I was using not MaxBlast. The utility gave me an 8 digit error code (which I have written down at home). I looked it up on the Maxtor website with the result shown below. I have the error code written down at home and can provide more details if you believe it is helpful.

What to do if PowerMax generates an eight digit diagnostic code:
Replace the drive. An eight digit diagnostic code indicates that the drive is failing and should be replaced as soon as possible. Backup your data, if possible, and obtain a RMA, provided the drive is still under warranty. The eight digit code will be required to obtain a return authorization (RMA). For information on warranty status and drive replacement (RMA) please visit our Warranty Services Page.

Did you try any of Ontrack's freeware or trial software? Might have some luck starting there: http://www.ontrack.com/freesoftware/

Thanks for the response.

Yes, Ontrack was one of several freeware programs that I tried. In all, I tried about 5 or 6 different freeware programs that I was able to find on the net. The result was very consistant. I created a boot disk, booted to DOS and ran the recovery program. In each case, the recovery program failed to recognize that the drive was present. I'm willing to try other programs if people have any that they recommend. However, I just don't believe that the controller is pulling any data from the platters. I hope I'm wrong.

If the drive is detected properly in BIOS (i.e. Full model name rather than just family name), then the drive is picking up from platter.

Some info is on the PCB but most is from the HDA.

That would be great news (and give me some hope). Do you have any other suggestions? If the computer is actually getting information from the platters, then why won't the recovery programs like Ontrack recognize that the disk is present? It's bothered me that Powermax recognizes the drive (but doesn't repair it), but none of the other programs will recognize it. Since this is new to me, perhaps I've missed something. I'll retry some of the recovery programs.

Are there other recovery programs that people suggest? I'm not familiar with MHDD but notice it seems to be prominent on this forum.

Looking at my littered desktop, I've tried:

Ontrack
Zero Assumption
PTDD Partition Table Doctor
DiskPatch
1st NTFS
ZAR80
hsr3.0

I think you have some firmware issues with this drive.

This cannot be solved with freeware, you DO need something like PC3000, or someone who has access to it.

IMHO of course

PC-3000 looks like a very cool solution. Offhand, I don't know anybody who has this, but I can make a few calls. Perhaps somebody in my company's IT department has this.

In the meantime, do you have any idea how much this solution costs (websites don't provide costing without contacting the distributor). Given the market size for this, I'm guessing it's several thousand?

My drive is not in the list of supported drives for PC-3000 according to documentation on the Deepspar website. I've sent a request for clarification.

I don't know it exactly but somewhere I read prices of several thousand dollars, IIRC even 5 digits.

Yes it's not on the list, but that did not make it unsupportable.
BTW weaker for good or for bad the price depends on which part of the world the recovery would be done.

_________________
DataRecovery.bg

@Samo: Interesting. I didn't know there is different pricing depending on world region. My bad.

Regards,
weaker

I mean country when I type "part of the world". Some places 500$ is much more above the middle salary.

_________________
DataRecovery.bg

I'm still looking to locate somebody not associated with an expensive HDD Recover company that has a PC-3000 type solution. In the meantime, are there any other solutions. I'm still puzzled why the BIOS and Powermax are able to detect the drive, but none of the DOS based solutions (Ontrack, etc..) are able to. Does anybody have an explanation for this? Based on this, are there any other recommendations?

have you tried the trial version of the seagate recovery software from http://services.seagate.com/diysoftware.aspx. You can see if the drive can be seen and the data is recoverable. You have to pay to be able to recover anything but you might find someone who has it.

This is assuming that you have access to a computer that works to run it from. Otherwise i have no ideas.

together with hpswami, I would be gratefull to learn other method than the one with the p-3000 hardware. how could someone save the data from the maxtor drive with corrupted firmware. for instance trying some software to do the job.