Hello everyone!

I have a Samsung HD501LJ (SATA 500GB, Spinpoint T166), bought few months ago, still under warranty. The drive had problem copying some files from it and made a clicking sound. I run HDD Regenerator, trying to fix the BAD SECTORS. After about 30 hours and 3500 bad sectors fixed the program had stuck (no response at all) and the drive made no noise. So, I normally restarted the PC!

Since then, at the very next boot after spinning up the drive is making a constant clicking sound and is not recognized by the BIOS. The Promise onboard SATA controller is trying to find it, keeps searching for about 30 seconds but NOTHING. So, I have no access to my data (partially backed-up)!

Could a PCB swap from a new drive fix the problem? Is there a firmware issue here?

Samsung at its site says:
"We don't release any firmwares. Because the product has been already optimized with its own configurations."

What would your advice be?

HEAD was weak, but now it's dead

So, what are my options for a dead head?

For 30 hours worth of operation you probably should have attempted to clone the disk. PCB swap will not make any difference, you need to replace the heads. If data is important I would recommend you send it to a professional

Hello hddguy!

I had previously made a partial backup for the most important data but not all. The problem was that I couldn't copy some of the files (CRC error) so I tried HDD Regenerator which seemed to work just fine up to a point.

I asked Ontrack, recommended by Samsung, and gave me a quote of 1600-2500 euros, apart from evaluation fee of 90 euros. Too much for the data involved.

I don't know how difficult it will be to do a swap head on my own (the disk has internal load/unload mechanism). I have found a same disk (same model) and at the present I'm gathering all information I can get...

I really appreciate your advice!

Congrats!
Now your data is gone forever!