SATA Hard drive failure

[Ivo]

My main drive stopped being recognized (checked on the BIOS after the PC didn't boot up) this last weekend. I already plugged it into another motherboard on a different computer and tried other cables but it doesn't detect it either.

It seems to get power - or at least the LED that usually shows HDD activity lights up when I turn on the computer (if it is plugged in, of course), but it just stays on. I was unable to identify if it made noise as I can't get it to be far from the fans to hear for sure.

As this happened over night while the PC was off (i.e. it was working Saturday, turned off normally, Sunday morning no longer detected on the BIOS)... I think the data inside it must be 100% intact. Now, I have backups of all the important stuff from the previous weekend (unfortunately was only about to back it up again), but there is still worthwhile data and work in there that I'd like to recover.

It is also still inside the warranty and I expect to take it to the store to see what they tell me, but I'd also like to know what anyone with a bit of hardware knowledge can tell me here.
I know there are expensive data recovery services that can often recover stuff even from hard drives that have been dropped / had major mechanical faults while spinning / liquid spills. I'm hoping that I can get the data back without, as the fault seemed to happen "peacefully", so to speak.

Thanks in advance,
Ivo.

EDIT: I already phone the store and they told me that if I am able to get an identical HDD I can try to transfer the magnetic disc to the other electronic part, and that I might even be able to do it without voiding the warranty (as long as I don't touch any seals, which are usually placed on the "other half" of the HDD unit. What do you guys think?

[Hatta]

Yes, it does sound like a board failure rather than anything mechanical in the drive. So I'd try the board swap. Next time, use RAID.

[Ziggy]

EDIT: I already phone the store and they told me that if I am able to get an identical HDD I can try to transfer the magnetic disc to the other electronic part, and that I might even be able to do it without voiding the warranty (as long as I don't touch any seals, which are usually placed on the "other half" of the HDD unit. What do you guys think?

I was gonna say that, usually that's what the company will do if it's warrantied. I don't know if I'd try that myself though. And if it isn't the board and turns out to be something else like the heads, then you're really in deep. You would have to swap the platters into another drive. Depending of the size of it, it might be multiple platters. If it's only 80GB or so, it might only be one. Rest assure if it's 500GB it's bound to have multiple platters. But THAT I would definitely not attempt myself. Unless you have something that's close to a clean room and lint free gloves. It's also pretty hard to take apart a drive.

What brand hard drive is it? I know you said you took it to the store, but you should try to contact the company directly. Some times they can surprise you with how helpful they can be.

[Niode]

Just want to know what HDD this is? If it's a Seagate drive (bought between january 2008 and october 2008, I think) I know exactly what's wrong and how to fix it.

[Ivo]

Hi.

It is indeed a Seagate drive, size 320 Gig, cache 32 Meg, SATA II. I should have said it in my original post but it was getting a bit long.

Contacting Seagate seems like a good idea, but I have to say I'm rather curious now that Niode posted about it. I got it from the store March 2008... I guess I could / should have googled for something, even though it happened on Sunday I'm still reeling a bit from wondering if I will have the huge hassle and I haven't had time to really think about the problem until now (and also not having my main PC operational at home sucks).

Ivo.

[Niode]

Don't worry it's nothing to do with your motherboard/sata controller, just the Hard drive. Seagate drives had a fault in the firmware on drives manufactured between the dates I stated above. The drive basically goes into panic mode for no apparant reason and to stop anything bad happening to the drive, it ceases to be recognised by BIOS.

I've just had a 500GB Seagate drive drop dead on me for this specific error.

You have 2 options.

1: Send the drive to Seagate and have them repair it for you. You may lose all the information on the disk. They may charge you since it's out of warranty. If you bought the drive OEM (IE non retail box from somewhere like Dabs or Newegg or something like that) you're up shit creak without a paddle, they won't repair it, you get a 90 day DoA returns with the manufacturer and the seller won't replace since it's older than 12 months, so you can't get an RMA either(this is exactly what happened to me when I enquired).

2: Fix it yourself by following this guide:


Text version: http://www.msfn.org/board/solution-seag ... 28807.html


Oh yeah, and seriously guys? "Use raid next time"? That's no help to anybody, before jumping the shark and saying it's this that or the other, it helps to get a bit of extra information from the OP and have a little knowledge in these kinds of things. Ivo could have gone through the huge trouble of replacing his motherboard (and no doubt his Windows licence if that's what flavour he uses) when the problem can be fixed by a $5 cable, hyperterminal and 20 minutes spare time.]

NB this is by no means a direct dig at anyone specific, it's just the kind of bogus diagnostics i've seen quite often in the technical help forum, and it just causes problems for everybody (not just the vocal minions posting in the thread).

[t0yrobo]

I'm not so sure if it'd be helpful in your situation, but I've heard in multiple places that sticking the drive in the freezer for awhile, then plugging it in again can get enough life out of it to at least back some stuff up.

[Ivo]

Thanks a lot to everyone that contributed. I'm pondering using mirrored drives (I think that is what RAID is) as this is the 2nd time I have non-essential data in danger (the first time I didn't recover it - but it was just stuff stored on an external that didn't fit on my main one and it wasn't very important at all). I'm not really running any data sensitive operation and I back up frequently everything that is important to me (e.g. family photos).

I'll try "your" fix, Niode, thanks a lot.

I got an OEM drive (just the drive on an anti-static bag), however it SHOULD still be in the warranty and considering that if it is a firmware problem is they should service it. I wish they would let people know of this kind of issue - they say "proactively upgrade the firmware" but until something happens the customers are not going to be looking for this info!
Of course sending it off will take huge loads of time anyway so I'll try the do it myself method.

Ivo.

[Hatta]

Oh yeah, and seriously guys? "Use raid next time"? That's no help to anybody,

It's no help this time, but it should help prevent another such occurrence. In this day of sub $100 TB drives there's no reason for anyone not to use RAID. Well, maybe if you have a laptop.

Ivo could have gone through the huge trouble of replacing his motherboard (and no doubt his Windows licence if that's what flavour he uses) when the problem can be fixed by a $5 cable, hyperterminal and 20 minutes spare time.]

Nobody said anything about the motherboard. We were talking about the board on the hard disk itself. When a hard drive dies quietly, it's usually a problem with that board. If it's a mechanical problem inside that drive it dies with a lot of clicking. If it's the logic board, you can often repair it by replacing the board with one from an identical drive. See here. There's nothing bogus about those diagnostics.

However, good call on the Seagate issue. I wasn't aware you could flash those things back to life.

[Niode]

Ah my bad, I assumed you meant the sata controller on the motherboard.

Yeah the seagate issue is a tricky one and I know that Seagate say that you should be proactive about upgrading the firmware, they offered exactly 0 sympathy for me. I agree wholeheartedly with the 'upgrade your firmware' token, but hard drives are just one of those things a lot of people (me included) overlook when it comes to 'upgrade' time. It's not something that just jumps out at you as something that should be upgraded, half the time, I only look for firmware/bios updates if I have an issue. The problem with this little beauty of a bug is it takes your entire system with it (if you only have one drive) and you're left with nothing but a BIOS SATA error. It took me several hours of diagnostics before I even thought of checking that it was my HDD at fault. Once found it's a pretty straight forward hack (if you have the cables handy that is) and the drive functions exactly as it did before.