Greetings again,
I was looking for a tip on this drive: It is a 500 GB Seagate Momentus. It presented with no ID, no motor spinning, only a very faint beep sound every few seconds. Thinking it was likely either stiction or a frozen spindle, I cracked open the case. I observed that the heads were not on the parking ramp, but were instead about 1/4 the way in from the outside of the platter. The spindle did not spin freely. I applied gentle pressure to the armature and rotationally to the spindle to try to free the heads. this worked and once the heads were on the ramp the spindle spun freely. All 4 heads appeared (to the naked eye) to be intact and parallel. I reapplied the cover and tried to get it to recognize on DDI. The motor spun up, but the drive started squealing after a few seconds. It looks like the armature is unable to get past the point where is was originally stuck. Any idea about where to go from here? My 2 ideas are: 1) Apply gentle pressure to force the armature past the sticking point. 2) Head swap. Any help is appreciated.

Steve

You kidding, you have the money to buy DDI but don't have the knowledge how to perform sutch easy job?!?
Sorry to sound a bit harsh...

Bosse

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Interesting...

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I would go with option 2....

mr_spokk,
Yes, I have DDI and PC3000. Yes, I am ignorant of the safest next step to take. This is why I asked the forum. It's not like there is a manual for this stuff. It all comes from experience and intuition. Since I have not seen this issue previously and since customer data is important, I'd rather seek the advice of my peers rather than head down a path from which there is no return. If you have a contribution to make to the topic, please do so.

ppumkin,
Quite interesting, but apparently also fairly common. Thoughts or ideas are welcome.

I'd say this always = no

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As always in cases where client data is involved and the person working on it doesn't know what to do... you should outsource to someone who can handle it rather than risk losing the data

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

drc and others,
Thanks for the replies. Outsourcing is fine, but at the end of the day, that means I would still have no experience with this drive problem and that doesn't really help. I have successfully gotten data from dozens of drives in various states of disrepair. So far, the only one I am unsuccessful on is my first drive that I still can't find compatible firmware for. Even that I think is not permanently lost, just not recovered yet. This Seagate just happens to be a drive issue that I haven't encountered before. What I hope is to figure out if it needs a head swap or if another method will work so that the next time I see this, it isn't a surprise. It seems like a head swap will work and that's fine and dandy. I'm just saying that if I don't need to do one, I'd rather not.

drc and others,
Thanks for the replies. Outsourcing is fine, but at the end of the day, that means I would still have no experience with this drive problem and that doesn't really help. I have successfully gotten data from dozens of drives in various states of disrepair. So far, the only one I am unsuccessful on is my first drive that I still can't find compatible firmware for. Even that I think is not permanently lost, just not recovered yet. This Seagate just happens to be a drive issue that I haven't encountered before. What I hope is to figure out if it needs a head swap or if another method will work so that the next time I see this, it isn't a surprise. It seems like a head swap will work and that's fine and dandy. I'm just saying that if I don't need to do one, I'd rather not.