Hi all, new poster to this forum.
I would like some advice on possible recovery methods for my 250GB Hitachi deskstar that is no longer recognised in bios.
The drive spins up and when holding it in my hand (connected) its making a kind of "heartbeat" type vibration.
I have tried on another PC and same results IDE controller cannot detect the drive.
I was considering a pcb replacement, but am having trouble finding an exact match, and after reading some of the threads here and realising its not a simple as all that, thought I would ask first

The HDD details
P/N 0A31611
MLC BA1466




Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Dave.

Send it to a tech or buy gear to diagnose the problem properly? What exactly is `kind of "heartbeat" type' vibration - does the motor spin up then spin down then spin up then spin down and so on, or does the motor spin up and the heads start jumping around? Can you record the sound and post that?

Thank you for your swift reply

I did take the HDD into PCWorld (local store) for data recovery, but they also failed to get the drive to be detected.
They did reccomend professional data recovery.

The motor spins up as normal, and stays spinning at I assume the correct rpm, the heartbeat type niose Ill try to record and post again soon, it seems to me the head is making the rythmic noise and its like a very slight clunk followed by a rapid swish....swish noise then a final slight clunk, this is repeated over and over with about a 1-2 second pause each time , it sounds as if the wiper is searching across the platter but unable to find what its looking for.

Dave.

Check ATA registers after complete the recalibration , what did u get?, if its fully identified, send an ATA 20h command , and check status & control register´s answer, if u dont know how to do that u know the answer

Regards

Sounds like the heads are trying to find sync mark/SA and failing, a pcb swap is not likely to help, you need to ship the disk to a tech if you value the data on it.

99% certain the PCB is not the problem.

This needs to be properly diagnosed.

By all means send it up to me in Peterborough and I'll tell you what's up with it and give you the option of a discounted recovery if it's possible.

PM me if interested.

_________________
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http://www.pcimage.co.uk

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Thank you all for your replies.


Beto, Im not sure how I would go about checking the registers?, I cannot get any of my PCs to even detect the drive at BIOS level.

Jauh, I was going to record the noises to post here, and I connected only a molex power plug to the HDD, I think after I disconnected it "on the fly" I have made the problem worse, because now it appears to be completely dead. no spin up, no noises what so ever.

Do you still think a PCB swap is not worth trying?

Thank again
EDIT: just read the last post thanks for the offer, I might very well take you up on that.

I've read that freezing the drive for an hour or 2 could help, is that just a myth? could I do more damage if I try it?

Dave.

Nay, nay and thrice nay! DO NOT freeze your drive, this is a myth and maybe used to work on REALLY old drives with certain issues. But is very likely to kill your drive.

The PCB swap is not worth trying because in these drives the PCB has NVRAM information programmed into it which is more-or-less unique to the drive. In other words it's 99.9% likely a PCB swap would not work, even if it WAS the problem, which with noise the drive is making is frankly unlikely.

If your drive was not spinning up then a PCB swap with a NVRAM transfer would be plausible but not in this case.

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

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

DO NOT FREEZE THE DRIVE

The new symptom could mean many more things - it actually expands the possibilities, not narrows them down...



I don't see what that would achieve for you, you need to do a lot more than just swap the PCB to get the data back...



How much is the data worth to you? One day I will actually put a hard disk into a freezer at home and take pictures afterwards...

Well thanks for all the replies, I didn't think freezing would help

I think I will send the disk to pcimage, as I am pretty much out of options for what I can do myself, I do like to think that I can fix most things, but in this case its better left to the professionals

The data is mostly unimportant, however I do have family pics and e-mails etc that I would like to recover if possible, and Ive totally learned my lesson about backing up to a partition on the same drive lol.
I am considering a SSD for future backup, more robust?

SD.

Sure... If you want to spend >£2000+VAT on data recovery from those... Just back your data up regularly to a RAID-1 or -5 or -6 box, that's the cheapest and most robust option, really!

I have never really trusted RAID, and never used it, I have heard bad things about the controllers, especially the onboard ones messing up and writing bad data to all the disks, maybe Ill just keep a library of DVDs then I figure as long as they are kept in the cases and out of the sun

SD.

Send it to pcimage he is closest to u, and he will help u surely, he has a lot of knowledgment

RAID controllers on the mobos cost in the region of £2 and are only as good as someone who wrote firmware for them. There are plenty of reliable external RAID solutions out there.



... and heat, and moisture, and ...

Just a quick thank you to everyone who took the time to read/post.

I have now posted the HDD to pcimage, I hope he can do some magic with it

Have a great weekend everyone

SD.

"Magic" has been performed

Bad PCB, had to be replaced with ROM and NVRAM transfer.

The drive also had media damage toward the end of surface 3, so a head-by-head image had to be made using PC3000 UDMA/DE.

An image in excess of 99% accuracy was made and data is on it's way back to SD as we speak.

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

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!

Good job

and your charged him £2000?

he he.. I wish

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

New!! HDD-PCB.COM for all your PCB and donor HDD requirements!