HDD GURU FORUMS

Guys I could use a little input, said drive began to intermittently show up in windows awhile back. The usb to sata plug had previously got destroyed so I had been using my internal sata port and had it in the PC. The sucky part is I had to shave down a 4 pin to sata power adapter to fit in the back of the enclosure, and I must have took to much off as it arced somehow and almost caught the PC on fire. Glad I was around when it happened and was able to pull it out in time. Luckily when plugged into a regular power port the drive fired right back up and was working fine still. All was well again until I noticed after the power went out one day that my BIOS would hang for 5 minutes + before booting into windows. Didn't really notice until after a few weeks that it was the HD doing it.

I really need the data back stored on the drive and wondering what my options are. At first I though maybe I could try swapping to a new pcb board with the firmware chip swap for 49.99, thinking that the short I had might have damaged it.. but here is the thing, the drive still spins up. No clicking noises and was never dropped. I have cleaned all the contacts on the pcb and there is no apparent burn marks or anything. So not sure if its worth trying?

The drive will actually show up plugged into a sata port when I hit F11 to select boot disk after waiting 5 minutes while the BIOS hangs, but thats about it. It sometimes shows up in the BIOS only if I power off the computer first, not just reset it. Also, when I plug the drive into my new usb sata/ide adapter the drive will appear in device manager under disks, but as soon as i try to click on populate or do anything it disconnects. It also disconnects after a minute of being detected. It only detects when I re-apply power to the drive before plugging it in. I am unable to find it in the windows disk manager at all either, was hoping I just had to assign a drive letter like I do sometimes when drives don't show up, but no go.

So i'm pretty sure that because it temporarily shows up in the bios, and still spins that a pcb swap won't work.. unless one of the guru's here thinks it might?

Guessing my only other option is to send it in for recovery, but wondering what the chances of a successful recovery with this particular drive would be? Are there any tests\software that I could run myself to get a better understanding of the problem first? Or does the fact that even trying to read from it making it disconnect from the device manager when trying to do anything, including scanning for disks with seatools, mean that I wont be able to run my own tests at all?

Thanks for any help
-Drop

It is most likely an internal read-write head problem, or maybe just firmware.
Many reputable labs offer a free diagnosis, so there is no risk to you, other than shipping let's say.

labtech wrote:It is most likely an internal read-write head problem, or maybe just firmware.
Many reputable labs offer a free diagnosis, so there is no risk to you, other than shipping let's say.

Firmware code is CC9F btw..

Do hard drives commonly get "bricked" involving firmware during power outages? Figured that would only happen in the event of a failed upgrade or something. I suppose swapping the pcb would be out of the question then, seems they would be transferring the bad firmware to the new board? Or would it not even transfer correctly and give an error I wonder.

It might actually have died beforehand and just a coincidence about the power outage, but I immediately noticed that my PC's BIOS would hang at startup right afterwords when the power came back on recently. Come to think of it if I remember right I first noticed the hang issue when someone flipped the breakers on and off before that even happened too. Its been a few months.

I also deleted about 6-700 GB of data last time I was able to access it. I feel like that alone could have caused it to wear out faster by having to move the head around the platter/s more?

Suppose my next question would be about reputable labs.. Just came to the forum so I will do some more research. Seagate themselves looks like they charge a 50$ assessment and then a $550 flat fee, but I obviously don't trust that company with my data now

There's a few posts here about the freeplay drives, some good some bad. I do know that the drive has never been dropped and can hear it spin up and parts are moving for a few seconds like its trying to read. And it is somewhat old now though, and the more I research the less likely the PCB swap sounds like it would work.