Howdy all - First, I appreciate any help you can give, I understand that there are thousands of requests like this and I have done some reading, but would appreciate some individualized help and do thank you for your time.

The specs:
Hitachi Deskstar
P/N: 0A33692
Capacity: 400GB
LBA: 781.422.786 Sectors
MLC: BA2029
RPM: 7200
CHS: 16383/16/63
Model: HDT725040VLA380
SATA: 3.0 Gb/s
Rated: 5V 730mA . 12V 640mA

Disclosure: I cannot send this to a mysterious data recovery house because of the nature of the data which I hope is still on the drive. This was a secondary system used to test various cases for my business, and was not hooked up to back up for some time - if you wish to scold me, that is fine, but what is past is past, and I will not make the same mistake again.

Symptoms:

• The drive still spins
• I do not see any "apparent" burned or shorted ICs
• The system rebooted on its own the other day during one of the Vista updates and failed to ever get past the BIOS screen - the drive was not recognized upon reboot.
• It does not make, nor was it making any wierd noises before failure
• I have since put in a new drive into the same system and have successfully installed the OS using the same power supply and "cording" - I have rebooted several times with no problem to the new HDD
• I have placed the disk into a SATA USB enclosure and can hear it spinning, there is no acrid smell of burned ICs or circuits - The system will recognize the enclosure as a USB removable drive, but will fail to mount the drive

I hope this is enough information to get started, again, I know I was stupid not to back this up, at least locally to CD or DVD... if you feel the need to reiterate my failure, I can take it, but once done, if you would please offer some helpful steps I can take to see if there is anything salvagable on the drive, I would greatly appreciate it.

Is the drive seen in the BIOS of the PC, when connected via SATA?

_________________
PC Image Data Recovery
http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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well u could tried on first to identify the "problem" start with the first diagnostic, check ATA registers to know if reach "readiness", using MHDD, Victoria, HDDL, etc, there are some free softs wich can do that task, after that, check if get fully "passport" and check after that, the "answer" to the Read sector commands, . To know wich kind of answer u got BSY, DRDY DSC, ABRT, IDNF, UNC; AMNF, etc

Regards

I will remount the drive back internally to the system and get you an answer right away.

Do you know where I can download the "free softs" and what they are called? ... I'm just not finding them quickly - not sure what to search on... I checked the Hitachi site and don't see anything there to rebuild the tables - again, appreciate the help!

MHDD is on this site, just look beneath Logout at the top left corner and
move to hddguru files and then to software.
mhdd32 file for cd or floppy diskette

+++

The BIOS does not see the drive - it gives a message to check the cable - but the same cable works fine with the new HDD

Hi,

This is enough information to say, "there is no user serviceable parts inside" including the SA.
This drive have a type of problem, wich You can't fix, i am sure!
If the data is important, i suggest to choose one big or medium dr company and trust on them, and ask them for the recovery...

Or try to survive without the data....

Regards,
Janos

The same old story... Confidential data and so on. I know EXACTLY your local market, go to the 'biggest one' (no names here!) and pay and good luck. Or I can suggest some other in the USA, bigger and more expensive , that can maybe make you feel more comfortable about your data. Or are you just seeking for an impossible free help just to avoid the expense? This is human, only there's a limit to DIY.