Dear Almighty!! Your sheep encountered a weird situation.
(First time trying to get data back, completely noob about HDD organism, no mention to terminal operations)

My St3250823A's down, and not responding to hyperterminal connection.
I bought a multimeter and found 3~4 TVS-diodes reads weird.
"Each of them, the ohm reading is the same no matter the diode is Red-Black or Black-Red."
The manual came with multimeter says a diode is good when R-B posts high ohms, and B-R posts small.
Why's that? The PCB's shorted or something??

We live, and we pray...., if kind you had a mind, plz take a look to this poor hardrive.

The conditions：
(a) 10 days ago, the drive suddentlly hanged up during normal operation.
Then 1 of 3 driver letter is gone.(C,D,E,, and E is gone).
Reboot checking failed due to missing part of windows data.
BIOS detected correctly, terminal successfully connected, I tried to backup data.

(b)Within 24 hours, file backup stopped because of growing bad sectors.
(Bad sector-> kept reading nothing -> heard click click sound->lost harddisk connection-> have to reboot)
BIOS detected correctly, terminal successfully connected, Tried seatools repairing.(yeah, now i know it's stupid to do any write-in,don't blame me)

(c)"Whole lot bad sectors found after windows checkdisk and seatools". Also tried restoring partition table and other hdd utilities, all useless(even firmware-brick steps were applied).
BIOS start to lose st3250823a(not found or 0 LBA), terminal successfully connected.

(d)Now the BIOS is thoroughly dumping the HD, and RS232 is not responding anymore.
(st3250823a is 7200.8, I tried the 7200.11 brick steps but in vain)
The last terminal from mars' bit like following:
F>Buzz...Head mask FFFF.....
No Cert Code.....
Invalid cert code....firmware resident requied:3.02
Error write System sec.
AutoRd err at 000002....

Not a TVS or PCB problem

Also please stop running terminal commands now before you really mess something up

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

If your data is valuable, I would recommend stop messing around and take it to a pro, before heads will ruin for good and damage the platters.

Thx for prompt reply~
Is there anything i can do to put it back to normal? or just withdraw certain files...
I'm worried if the reserved sectors are gone, because SeDiv and MHDD can't access reserved sectors.

also awaiting a quote from local dealers, but they probably don't like handle this.

sad..

NO you can not do anything more to this drive if you want back your data The more you do the worse it gets and the heads will be gone forever. Stop now before you really screw it up and then the cost of repair will triple to you on this. Take it to a local DR company and have them help you if your data is important to you. If not then continue on and know that you have been warned on this and you understand that you can kill this drive at any moment the way you are going now at it.

_________________
Iorana Haraharaini

What do you mean "local dealers"? Just IT company? They will probably ruin your chances.

You need a data recovery pro to do it.

(update:)
An Australia data rescue company helped us to retrieve data this morning.
It's lucky. The 250gb hdd is unplugged from a 10 years old computer server.
We never know the old geek's quipped with raid card(??), model # is Acard AEC-6895S.

Via telephone and remote control, all data is recovered in 2 hours.(Time saving & less cost)
They'll send us 3 new 250GB hdds and 2 power supply units as spare item.
Everything's back to normal, really thank to people involved in this Red-alarm operation.
***************************************************************************
Well, while we're backing up data....,the originally failed hdd was send to our neighborhood: a little electronic
store(as you know, sells TV and washing machines).
Two technikers spent 3 hours testing and resolidering most components on the little PCB, and guess what??!!
The hdd temporally back to normal too.
Getting back work files:fine, saving private employee data:excellent!!!
Good luck,, everyone!!

Sorry to say but this post sound like as crock of shi******. It is hard to belive anything you are saying on this one. 2 hour phone recovery and now your local TV and washing machine repair shop repaired your PCB board. If so then great but for your problem phone assistance? Espeically after entering wrong terminal commands, applying a fix that is not for this drive and to say other things on this one. From your description on your post sounded like you used wrong terminal commands and destroyed your SA on this HDD. Your last terminal output does not match what you are saying now on this one. Sorry this is a bogus solution you have posted here in my books.

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Iorana Haraharaini

You had 250GB HDD in 2001? I guess had Sata interface also?

No offense but read the origin paragraph carefully.
The business data was drawn back from other HDDs in the tiny old computer riad, not from the damaged one.
And nobody knows the backup sequences, that's why we need data recovery service.

We really thank to our neighborhood who tried every effort and time. Though the 250g drive met it's eventually death, it's still inspiring to save some more employee grocery in time, other than business data.



Well, it's no big deal when they bought a POS computer or when the hdds were put inside.
What is important is we'll have spare items, and there's a number for emergency use. Even if the hand come from thousand miles away....