Hello,

Well I have Seagate 250GB HDD which was dead due to logical board(PCB) Failure.

Specs of the PCB

PCB Number: 100468303 REV A
Smooth Chip number: 100369972
BIG CHIP number: TTB5041A0


I found the same PCB and ordered it. I was advised by the seller that the ROM chip needs to be replaced for the device to be working correctly.

I first swapped the PCB without replacing, the drive started spinning but was not detected in BIOS.

Now i had the ROM chip replaced from patient PCB to the donor PCB the drive gets recognized in BIOS but not in OS.

I tried Computer Management in OS - No go
Tried Partition Magic - Not detected here (not as RAW drive either)
Tried Windows 7/Windows Vista bootable disc so that it may get detected during installation - No Go

I tried Seagate Seatools for DOS - The drive gets detected there.

There is important data on the drive which I need to be recovered. Now how do i go about making the drive detectable in the OS ? Any advanced data recovery tool that can detect the HDD for a bootable media ?

My idea: Use one of those Ultimate Bootable discs or Hard drive utilities to disc and if it is detected format the HDD using NTFS (quick format). Once the HDD is detected in the system, try the recovery process .. What do you have to say about that ?

Either you did something wrong i.e. pcb not compatible OR the drive has other problems (firmware). Refer to the nearest pro.

I got my PCB replaced by a local technician itself who is a PRO. about the PCB drive not being compatible .. It matches everything, as a matter of fact I bought it from a seller from this forum.

I booted the drive through Seatools for DOS by Seagate and it showed the correct firmware version there.

OK then there's something else : part of firmware is on the PCB, other part is stored ON THE PLATTERS. Or there's something else that doesn't work.
We can only guess as we don't have the drive at hand and proper diagnose is needed. Anyway, the "PRO" should have the instruments and the diagnostic gear to pinpoint exactly what is the problem with your drive.
Instead of doing something on your own, ROM swap by another and other parts by someone else, have the whole drive diagnosed and data recovered : quicker and safer.

I consulted my local technician and he says the hard drive media is corrupted and it needs to be rebuilt or something. So how do I get that done ?

Need proper diagnose : you don't seem to know if there is file system problems or HDD problems.

Well One thing for sure is HDD physically has no problems whatsoever. It is working perfectly fine. I am sure that the filesystem is what is having the issue. But anyways the hard drive is detected by Seatools for DOS by seagate and I can write Zeros into the drive and make it work again .. SO i am sure that HDD is fine and it is the filesystem which is having issue.

So my question is what tools or what do i need to so that i can get my data back?

Run a read test with MHDD to confirm that the LBA's are actually accessible.

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PC Image Data Recovery
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I ran MHDD but the drive was not detected there. I did SHIFT + F3 and I see my other HDD not this one.

If you take on a Seagate recovery then your need the proper tools to read the terminal output. In my opinion if you cant show a terminal report then few professionals will answer your posts.



If the data was important it sure isn't now. You can't just guess at these things and pick random programs in the hope that it can recover your data. Have you tried freezing or hard drive spray?

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Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

I don't understand why people still think formatting or writing zeros to their drives is going to help with data recovery.

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

Written zeroes = killed data.

How could it (Seatools) write zeroes on a non properly detected drive, to me it's a mystery. Anyway...

No no no ... I never said Writing Zeros is gonna help me recover data .. What I was trying to tell was that the drive is fine and I can write zeros to it and make the drive work, ofcoss in that case i lose the data !



Well the HDD gets detected in Seatools perfectly with the firmware, serial number and everthing and i ran couple of tests like DST and it said success. So I am pretty sure it can write Zeros too without any problem in which case i would kill the data but could get my hdd detected in OS for sure.


Now how do i go about rebuilding the HDD? The information i got was that the media is corrupt and needs to rebuild. So can it be partition table problem? MBR problem? File system problem? ... Can somebody suggest me how to start diagonizing. I am sure it is something simple !

Also I tried couple Ontrack recovery and other recovery softwares directly from a bootable discs none of them recognized the hdd.

The contents of the user area is not going to determine whether or not the drive shows up in BIOS or tools...

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You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

If MHDD cannot read any sectors, then the drive has more issues than logical.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

MHDD may not be reading the drive if its a slave. Try Victoria or test the surface with seatools. If that checks OK, download Hirens boot CD and run one of recovery imaging programs such as Diskpatch or Media Tools Pro. Short of that then something else must be going on like a weak / bad head.

Actually the primary IDE is disabled by default in MHDD. The PCB number above indicates that this is probably a SATA drive where it wouldn't really matter anyway. It's more likely that MHDD can't handle that motherboard SATA controller, cabling problem, or the drive has a problem.

MHDD Manual:
http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/ ... al.en.html

_________________
Buy your friends Toshiba\Hitachi and your enemies Seagate.

But itz a SATA HDD. I don't understand where the Master-Slave concept come into the picture. I can ofcourse remove my working HDD and connect the faulty one would that make it the master then ? From what I know there is no Master-Slave for SATA HDDs. please correct me If i am wrong. I have not done the surface test, I will do that and report the same. Will also try Hirens



I doubled checked with the local technician and he says there is no physical issues at all. All he says is we have to get the media rebuilt bcos the data is corrupted. I am guessing he is talking about FileSystem issue. Anything you can recommend to see what other issues it can be other than physical hdd issue.

Sounds like PW-Locked to me!

Bosse

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Rescue IT Datarecovery service Sweden
Rescue IT Dataräddning Göteborg AB
http://www.rescue-it.se

You say it's seen in the BIOS, right?

Try and scan with hddscan (free download from this site).

What we are trying to ascertain is if the sectors in the user area are accessable at all.

There are many instances where a drive "appears" to be working perfectly (i.e. seen in BIOS and spinning up normally with no odd noises), such as password protected (like mr_spokk says) or having a firmware issue of some sort.

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!