Experts,

I know I'm to blame for not backing up the data! Shame on me!.
The fact is, my main 3-month old ST3500320AS decided to "die" the other day.
The drive is detected by the BIOS and seems to spin up correctly (if connected to the PC internal power supply)
When I have this drive connected to the internal SATA controller, Windows (XP) takes AGES to boot. The is not the boot drive.
If I connect it to an external enclosure (AKASA SATA-to-USB), the drive doesn't always start. When it starts, it takes some minutes for the OS to recognize the drive. Once it's recognized, everything seems to be working fine... the data is there, you can browse the directories, etc. But, when you fire the copy to backup the data, it begins at good 27 MB/s and it gradually begins dropping down to 45 kB/s... and then it stops. There's not scratching noise and I've tried different files in different directories in the drive. The behaviour is the same.
Do you know what can be happening and what I can do to take the data out of the drive?

Thanks!

have you tried the drive in a different pc?

Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I tried three different PCs.
I even changed the circuit board with another drive, same model, but made in a different country... it didn't work either, but the drive behaved differently -> repetitive noises when powered.

And you still need the data ?

If the data is REALLY important to you, send it to a professional. If it's important, but not worth more than $500, use a DOS-based (Or Linux) imager, and image the drive to another drive. If the data isn't important at all, put the drive in the freezer.

In the freezer ? Where will be better fixed ? Near the ice cream or near the vodka bottles ?

Hi,

U should not let windows to mess with it. Try to copy an image as quickly as possible and run some logical recovery SW on the image.

pepe

_________________
Adatmentés - Data recovery

Vodka, of course

Hey, thanks all for your replies.
I guess vodka would be for me... to forget about all this.

The drive seems perfectly ok. Under System Rescue CD I can browse its contents. I can even see the contents of the files but when I try to copy it's sloooooooooooooow. I guess it has some problems with the cache or whatever.

Any ideas?

Try not to write on the disk. just read.
There are programs that read the disk sequentially and copy the contents to other drive. Minimal head movement. But I am no expert, so I cannot give you advice on which programs are available.

Also, if the data is really important, send it out. I'm not just saying that to drum up business. Dying drives rarely get better on their own, and usually get worse. If you fiddle with it until it stops, you may lose your chance.

I'm suspecting you're not sending it out no matter what. It's just a disclaimer.

ST3500320AS is one of the potential defect drives from Seagate, symptoms caused by cache and eventually zero bytes shown and data is trapped, some say due to translator problem which we have been unable to resolve due to different command sets on 7200.11, Doomer is the only person who knows.

I guess there's a funny problem with the drive.
It doesn't seem to be a suface related problem since the data can be extracted and there's no scratching noise. All the problem came after running a xxxxxx windows defrag.
I'm painfully copying the data out of the drive using system rescue CD. Depending on the file it goes full speed (40 MB/s) or sloooooooow speed (down to 25kB/s).
I ran MHDD scan and it showed lost of different colors (incluiding brown and reds), so I guess there's something funny about the drive. Also, SMART reports showed lost of ECC error corrections, so I guess it may be something related to broken cache...

Thanks all for your help!

As an update, it's taken me more than one week to dump 99% of the drive contents, but... it's been worth.

Now, time to *break* the drive.

Don't break it, if under warranty rma it, or ask a pro near you if he can fix it and certify for few bucks, and use for non-critical data...

It is already broken.

Just joking... now it's time to use *soft* tools with it.
I tried to change the PCB... so I already voided the warranty!

Well,
after zeroing the drive, MHDD'ing it etc... I can say it writes at 100 MB/s but it reads information at variable rates (from 90MB/s to 25 KB/s)... Memory problem?
It's packed and on it's way to Seagate.
Enjoy and merry christmas!