Hi guys, before I start, here's the stats on my drive:

Drive: Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320gb
Model: ST9320421AS

I replaced a failed Western Digital drive in my laptop (great luck I have...) with this Seagate drive about 1.5 years ago. I was downloading some data and playing a song on my computer, when all of a sudden, the computer froze and the audio began to loop. I restarted the computer, and Windows wouldn't boot, saying a file was missing (forgot which one). I restarted the computer again, and I had the same problem (although there was a different file name this time). I restarted a 3rd time, and this time, a blinking cursor came up after the POST.

I popped in the re-installation CD to my laptop, and Windows reported that no hard drive was detected. I took the hard drive out and connected it to an external adapter, although it wouldn't start either (Windows doesn't detect a USB connected device either). I made a short recording here: (sorry for the poor quality)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpIL2CSzK3A

As you can hear, it appears there appears to be some kind of reading attempted for a few seconds, then a beep sound, then the hard drive powers off completely. It seems strange to me that something like this would happen considering the hard drive wasn't dropped or mishandled in any way... What do you think the likely problem would be in this situation?

My guess would be heads on this one. If it spins and beeps then it can mean that you have a head problem on this and it is not reading your drive. A terminal log will tell more of the problem on this drive. It moret han likely is a 5400.4 or 5400.6 laptop seagate drive. The 5400.4 are not known for busy problems and can not be repaired this way especially if it is beeping and spins downs and stops completely. I would suggest that you take it in for a estimate to a DR company and see what they tell you on this one.

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Iorana Haraharaini

It sounds to me that ur drive is scratching the platters with the sliders... Whats the FW version on the drive ? Can make it on the youtube vid.

actually i think the dreaded 7.01 FW on the 2.5 seagate drives where 5.4k rpm drives , not the 7.2... still sounds like u had a head crash and the platters are getting shaved to dust...

Sorry, the firmware is SD13. So it doesn't sound good to you? I haven't seen this exact problem with my searches on this forum, and my beep has more of a "chirp" sound, although it does sound vaguely similar to the second Seagate audio clip here (with the problem listed as "bad heads").

http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

Just one more question.. Is there any sense for me to try to get a terminal log from the drive at this point? I've read some guides on the forum on how to do that, and I'm wondering if that would be useful. I don't think I'll be opening the drive or anything like that.

Final question...

I plugged it in one more time after letting it sit for a while. The drive appears to spin up and fail and usual, but it now gets detected. I have some demo file recovery programs installed, and they all listed the correct model number of the drive, except that the hard drive size was listed as 2048.00 GB. Does that offer any additional insight?

I don't plan to run the drive any more, and I'll take it to an expert soon.

not to me , but ill say that it warrants looking at a terminal log now.

Try to get us a terminal log reading on this one if you can. That would help a lot right now.

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Iorana Haraharaini

Hi guys, I believe I've been able to successfully get a terminal reading from the drive. It said Rst 0x10M when it launched, and now I have this command prompt after hitting control+z.

ASCII Diag mode

F3 T>

I used most of the BSY guides to get my terminal setup running, so at this point, I'm not sure what I should do. What should I type in to get a terminal log?

This post has the answer to your first question in it
st3500418as-7200-head-firmware-issue-t14890.html

I would not type any of the commands you found in all the guides on the net they are extremely model specific commands. People brick their drives with the wrong commands all the time and no data recovery is achieved. In your case having access to the terminal information is just for diagnostic purposes to see what comes up. very dangerous area to type into without specific knowledge of what you are doing.

Have you attempted to clone this drive since it shows up in bios ?

Yeah, I don't plan on fixing anything myself through the terminal, I just wanted to get an idea of what could be wrong (it was also educational to put together the connection for the terminal and learn a little more about how hard drives work). Also, I haven't seen anyone mention any kind of issues with the 7200.3 drive.

I was just wondering if there were any kind of diagnostic commands that could give me some additional information about the drive.

I tried cloning it, but an error would occur as soon as the first sector was read. Also, because the recovery programs I tried think that the drive is 2 TB, I believe the wrong amount of sectors are shown.

to answer the idea of whats wrong with the drive: From your posts it sounds like the firmware or some module has suffered some level of corruption and possibly as others posted a bad or weak head. With DR tools that can read the SA part of the drive and firmware modules to get a better diagnosis on the drive and heads. Your data may be recoverable. This is not a DIY repair on this based on symptoms and terminal output you have provided. Many of the DR firms will look at the drive for free and give you a better idea and option for recovery.

I searched around on the forum, and I found a topic that seems to describe the exact same problem I'm facing:

seagate-momentus-7200-0lba-just-like-the-7200-t13611.html#p88954

I wonder if this is some kind of variation of the 0 LBA problem. I'll try taking it to a professional later this week, my only concern is that this is a unique problem and may be difficult to diagnose.

It's not difficult to diagnose if you know your stuff and if you have the right gear to do it. Of course if everything is based on "internet science"... this usually gives a lot of troubles !