2 months ago I came down to my computer on the login screen, this would usually happen after a very short power outage / voltage drop in the house. I shutdown the computer since I couldn't use the keyboard to login and booted it back up fine. After logging back in I was loading back all my tabs and programs and it seemed to respond somewhat slower than usual so I went ahead and restart the computer again. On shutdown it was taking longer than usual and I chalked it up as a slight hiccup so I forced shutdown by power button. After that the drive would not boot back up.

Drive is a ST31000524AS Barracuda 7200.12 that has never left my computer so no chance of physical abuse.

The drive identified itself as st_m13fqbl with a capacity of 8.4GB. The drive would start up, click slow click 11 times and then spindown. No grinding noises or strange noises asides from the click.
I had an rs232 ttl usb cable and connected it to the terminal after reading about the infamous BSY error but was never able to do anything with it as the drive never gave me an output or let me input.
Cable was fine as I tried with another seagate drive of mine and it gave a terminal prompt no problem, problem drive was just blank.

What are your thoughts on drive giving no terminal input/output and an unusual capacity of 8.4GB, not usual lba0 bug?

Not knowing where to go from there I had sent the drive to a company in the US who I will not name for now. I paid for a rush diagnostics and was told on the phone the drive has bad/degraded heads after inspection but no signs of platter damage(relieved me somewhat) and was quoted $800 for recovery. Having my doubts about the problem and hesitation about the cost I turned down the recovery and wanted to give the drive to somebody else for a second look.

I then delivered the drive to Luke at Recovery Force who had a look at the drive and was told the drive had damaged heads, media damage, and damaged SA. On top of that Luke told me that he had even found dust in the drive. As much as I wanted to go ahead with the recovery the cost was too much for an unknown chance of recovery and I had the drive returned to me.

I then sent the drive to a reputable data recovery firm that performed a headswap and attempted the recovery. After the attempt at recovery I was told the drive was able to ID after headswap but would not initialize and head/s started to click after a few minutes of trying to init. Head was then clipped off and an attempt to recover off other heads was tried but drive still would not get ready

What do you guys think the initial problem of my HDD was? HD was never dropped or suffered any sort of physical damage prior to first diagnostic so I'm not sure how platter damage/head crash would be feasible but I am no expert. If the drive ID'd properly after headswap but would not init because of problems with SA/Critical modules is there some hope for partial recovery at this point since the platter for head1 is in good condition.

I'm trying to piece things together right now but hard not to be angry at the first company who performed diagnostics on the drive and allowed dust in while opening it in a "supposed" clean room and if the diagnostic that I paid for was either just really poor that they missed the media or they managed to damage the drive themselves.

I'm quite confident that Luke at recovery force didn't mess anything up. He does great work and does use a clean room, I've seen it. He was just smart enough to know a lost cause when he saw it.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

If there was media damage that's undoubtedly what created the damage. Even without any physical trauma the read write heads can become dislodged or stuck to the platters and cause damage.

The second guy was likely just trying to shift the blame.

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Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

You mean the third guy. Luke was the second guy to have it. You perhaps missed where he said

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Sabo Computer Repairs & Data Recovery

Nobody tried to shift the blame. The other it went was, firm in US, Luke, then 3rd firm who performed headswap. It was the first company in the US that went wrong somewhere.

Although there was a little dust inside the drive, I don't see any reason to blame the first company for making it worse. I suspect that it was just as bad when they got it as when I got it and when the "reputable lab" got it. If anything, they underestimated the damage, thus the low quote and optimism.

It is nice to know my assessment was correct, but it sucks that the "reputable lab" was unable to prove me wrong. Not only are you still without your data, the "reputable lab" is out the cost of their time and parts.

The big question is, should I feel honoured to be the only one of the three mentioned or should I feel insulted that you are implying that only the 3rd lab is reputable?

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

Luke, I went to you because you were more than reputable, I didn't think I had to add more because most members here know you very well. The first lab I sent it to is just my doubt, as they allowed dust to get into the drive, what else was done without much care/caution? The rep I spoke to had told me that they inspected the heads, if the heads were inspected, would it not be easy to see debris on the heads from magnetic dust? This was no problem for you or the third lab I sent it to. Yes it was a low quote compared to other labs, they were the first ones to open the drive. They tried and fought for my business as them having the lowest costs around which I believe has to do with the fact that they have an abundance of parts available to them. I also had paid the lab fee + parts to the third lab so they aren't out completely.

I'm not so sure if the drive was as bad before you guys got it. I asked the rep quite a few times to confirm that there was no platter damage, to which the rep told me no and chance of recovery was good. So either the lab caused the damage in some way after they looked at it or they did a very poor diagnosis which for me personally raises questions.