What happened was a dangerously faulty peripheral was connected to a USB port and the device was plugged in to the main power socket. A major electrical fault in the wiring caused 240 volts ac current to enter the motherboard directly via the usb port lead (No, it's not a joke) Now the mainboard was fried (along with the PSU) but the CPU, memory, my pcie 8800gts Nvidia graphics card, DVD writer all survived amazingly. The hard drive though has never booted correctlly since.

I just checked the different sounds my drive should be making and the noise I get isn't there. Funnily enough you don't have a "Just fed mains power into usb port" Option

The drive makes between 8 and 10 identical short buzzing noises and in between each buzz is around 2-3 seconds of silence. After 9 buzzes there is no more response. It reacts the same way every time I try it.

Now considering the event that caused the issue (and the notable components that survived), is there any hope that I don't have a seized motor on the drive? Because I didn't just have a power fluctuation but mains electric went through the board. Somehow, despite my CPU surviving that power surge got to the hard disk.

I want to try a new PCB from an identical one from ebay. The drive goes in modern Sky+ hd set top boxes, its easy to get one. But if it's a seized motor then I may as well just bin it. How can I rule out a motor seizure?

Is it the same disk of THIS thread ?

worth-shot-replacing-the-pcb-damaged-drive-t17582.html

The answer has already been given .

99 out of 100 the problem is mechanical due to the abnormal shutdown, there are ALL the symptoms of stiction or mechanical failure. If an identical PCB has same behaviour (BEWARE you can fry the new PCB under certain circumstances WITHOUT proper "damage limiting" stuff !!) , it's 100% internal problem.

As BlackST says, VERY likely stiction (heads stuck to the platter), sound is motor current ramping up to try and start the drive repeating after each timeout. Common after power events with heads left unparked.

Had one of these earlier this week. User had opened it, found the heads stuck, unstuck them with his finger/some lever and then restarted the drive. It clicked (no surprise).
Then he sent it to us. 2 Hours cleaning time (minimum charge for self opened drives). 2 sets of heads and 3 days cloning, he has 75% of his data back. Missing stuff where heads were stuck (we killed another set traversing this area). Price, more than twice what it would have cost of we had opened it and been able to free the heads without damaging them.

Lesson - Search for one of the Professionals in your area, there a re a few on here from England and at least get it assessed (I think Sean from PCimage does this for free). That way you can make an economic assessment of self help versus professional help based on real knowledge of costs rather than a notion that its too expensive especially if the data is important.

Note: Replacing the PCB will do nothing in this case. Powering it up you also risk the heads breaking free and tearing off/bending to become missiles bouncing around on your platters or worse becoming scrapers to remove your data from the platters.

...but this was not mentioned in the DIY (destroy it yourself) videos !!!

I take it that your data aren't important?

See this thread, but heed the warnings:
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/FreeAgent- ... 242#M11384

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

EVEN when data is not important an he gets it working again, this drive cannot be used reliably any more.

So, if data is important, send it to a pro, if data is not important, bin it.

Dobre

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Datarecovery in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany
Datarecoverytools http://www.drtools.eu

Just a side question-

I cannot think of any device that uses 240v into a usb stick? I am just curious.. or was it a home made device ?

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Think @ crap UPS that have USB connection for shutting down the PC or other stuff

If you see how many stuff is made, you wonder why there is not 1 explosion / 1 fire every minute

A USB-connected laser printer with a primary-secondary insulation fault in the switchmode transformer could leak mains voltage into the load.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.