Hello! I am no HDD expert but I am trying. I did a search in your forums but did not end up with an article that helped me to understand my problem.

Main actor of my miserable story is a Samsung HD103SI (1TB). For years this drive has been working connected to a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3LP Mainboard. It is a SATA300 HDD. A week ago i got an ICYBOX case and put the drive there (externally via Usb). I used the drive once or twice and had access to my data on it. But then after a couple of days i powered the drive on and had no access. The HDD did not even show up in Win7 storage manager.

I connected the drive back internally in the PC, which now had another drive and new Win7. Windows hangs on the "Windows starting" screen and does not continue. Same with the Win7 Install CD. When the drive is connected the installation process starts and hangs before the first screen (language and hard drive selection).

BIOS can see the drive. When I boot from it (the former OS partitions are untouched) I get the "Error: unknown filesystem" and the grub rescue command line.This is fine. I used the set boot command lines i found online and actually can manage to see the familiar grub boot selection screen (one partition had ubuntu on it), but either OS (Windows7/Ubuntu) that I select from the grub menu, both selections just lead me to a black screen instantly.

I used UBCD and on it the hutil and es-tool (the samsung hdd tools). The drive passes all fitness tests. I do not have much clue of the other tools on the UBCD but some of them managed to display the partitions I used to have on the drive.

Please ask if you need more info. I would be so greatful to get all pictures and work related files back. What should i do?

Hi again!
Looks like nobody had a suggestion. I alaso find it really weird thath the drive fitness tools work but nothing else. I now had the chance to let some ppl with know how look at the drive. Seems to be some mechanical error. They had exactly the same behaviour.

My two next steps are:

1. Buy identical drive and change the control board on the bottom side.
2. Send the drive to professional data recovary firm and pay big time.

What do you think? Does anyone know if it is even possible to do step 1 with my drive?

Thanks in advance!

if it's indeed a mechanical problem step 1 doesn't gonna help you

i think you got media problems, the best in this case is to send to a Pro. i think your case will be recoverable by a pro with exeprience.

Can you show us a SMART report? You could use a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo:

http://crystalmark.info/software/Crysta ... dex-e.html

Can you show us the partitions with a disc editor, eg DMDE (freeware)?

http://dmde.com/

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

I wrote "mechanical" but did not mean exactly that. I was rather suggesting that it might be the electronics of the drive. Sending to a pro seems to be very expensive so i would like to rule out the possibility, that I can fix it by changing the circuits on the bottom. Would u not try that?

Another detail someone pointed out to me: When the drive starts I hear the usual sequential noice indicating read operationson on the drive. These sequences used to be 4 in number but seem to be like 6 now. Seems to try more often then before. I also tried the drive on many systems with many OS and none could detect the drive or rather got stuck once the drive got plugged in.

it can be weak/bad heads, physically media damage or hope for the best a few bad sectors
the drive continues spinning or it's stops to spin ?
doesn't seem to be PCB (electronic) problem at all

Obtain a log from the drive's serial terminal port.

How to connect a terminal cable on a Samsung drive ?
http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=116&t=189

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thank you for the many replys.

The current state is this: The drive powers on and spins. Any system, that tries to access the device hangs, lags or even sometimes freezes. At the moment the tools I used when I wrote my first post, like ES-Tool, dont even start from the UBCD when drive is connected. Some of them had leds indicating that the drive was constantly in a read/write task. Since I dont currently have the tools and knowledge to read serial connection data, soldering roms and perform other nifty tricks, I might end up sending the device to a paid service.

Thank you all anyway.

Right after I gave up hope I said, "funk it! one last try". Some BIOS changes allowed me to get to UBCD tools again. I cant use Windows tools to give u the info u wanted but here are some screenshots attached. I am looking to fine some tool on the UBCD to read the smart info.

I would not run tests on a drive you want the data from, that might cause more damage to the heads if they are weak or there is media damage. Have you tried to boot up a linux? You can check SMART there and dmesg will also give some hints if there is a problem with the disk.

I would download CAINE: h**p://www.caine-live.net/page5/page5.html boot that CD and check the drive by the drive utility. This utility will give you SMART info too.

As long as the drive is detected in BIOS DR by a pro should not cost too much: The heads might "only" be weak and not damaged, so it might be possible to recover data without clean room work. Changing PCB will not help, you could check if pcb contacts are ok and clean them but I do not think that will help much here.

If data is important, do not run surface scans or try to repair the disk by software, it might cause more damage.

Best luck,

_________________
030 Datenrettung Berlin GmbH (Germany)
HDD, SSD, NAS, RAID Datenrettung - 030-datenrettung.de

I think there are some damage on sectors that holds file system meta data.
This could cause a weak power supply system.
The PCB is works fine, if the drive spins up, and recognisable.
Your recovery price will not be too high, if you stop experimentation at this point.

I disassembled the PCB. You can see the contacts. Before I read your comments i also thought that they might justneed some cleaning.

To be honest... First thing i did before i posted the first post was trying to reset fix MBR. This might have costed me some partitions ?! Maybe. Currently Iam only trying to get the SMART data. But the tool on the UBCD is not giving me much that I understand. I will make screenshots once I cleaned the contacts and put it back together.