Dead Hard drive?

I

inzandity

New Member
Alright here's the deal. Had a string of bad luck this week...

Earlier this week I had a failure with my back up hard drive. I ordered a new one right away and started to move my files to my computer so I'd have a backup for the time being (I'm usually a freak about keeping a backup for this reason...). Long story short, my dog then proceeded to trip over the cord while I was in the kitchen and knocked my second external over. It didn't fall off of the table, but just landed hard on the table. It then locked up my PC. I turned off the drive and rebooted my machine. Then it wouldn't recognize the drive and this is where the hell started. It would hum (not sure if it was really louder than normal because I have music or tv on), but every 5-10 seconds, it would make a sound like a soft beep. So I unplugged it, tried it on another machine with the same results. I removed the drive from the external casing and tried it in a DrivX Hard Drive caddy again with the same results.

From here I opened to hard drive (yes I know my warranty is voided) and there were no scratches on the platter and the head arm was resting toward the center of the platter.

So my question for you guys is...am I screwed? Someone mentioned that my PCB board may be bad. Would this be the case if the drive still spins up? I found an exact replacement on eBay for 40 bucks and want to know if it's worth it. I will mention that I have EVERYTHING on this drive. 1000's of pictures, music...you know the drill.

Specs are below on the HDD

Maker - Seagate
Model - ST3500830AS
Capacity - 500GB
P/N - 9BJ136-568
Firmware - 3.AFM
Date Code - 08XXX
Site Code - SU
Main Chip # - V520AA

Sorry for long post, just wanted to make sure I got as many details as possible. Would really REALLY appreciate some feedback.
 
If the data on the drive is that important to you, your better off sending the drive off to a data recovery company and let them recover the data. Sounds like you already opened the drive, which is bad in itself unless you are in a clean room dedicated for drive repair.
 
What johnb said is true but if it was mine I'd try running Spin-Rite on it first.
Spin-Rite is a dos app created by Gibson Research. It saved my hdd once which was filled with no back-ups.
My drive would lock up my comp when I tried accessing it but after Spin-Rite it is still working to this day.
 
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Fortunately because of where I work, I was able to open the hard drive in a clean area that we have designated for this type of stuff. I will try that program tomorrow and let you know. Thanks for the tips so far.
 
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