Seagate went bad 2

[BadSeagate]

Hi all...I have a Seagate 60GB which just died on my PC. The CMOS/BIOS does not find it; it's reporting "HD not found". I tried ONTrack software and it does not detect a HD on my system. I removed it and installed on another system--same issue. The HD ticks once every 3-4 seconds...I hear the platters whirring. Could this be a circuit board thing? Could I just replace the circuit board with one from an identical drive? I just got a quote for $1200 to recover--too much to recover family photos and Word documents.
Thanks!

 

[Blujacket]

Replacing the circuit board is just one of the techniques used by data-recovery firms, but it has to be exactly identical. Just don't open the case itself, can't let any little tiny wee bit of dust in.

 

[BadSeagate]

Thanks for your insites. I was planning on buying an identical (by model number) HD. If I were to replace just the circuit board, I wouldn't be cracking open the HD, would I? I wouldn't want to do that...

 

[wolluf]

of course, may not solve your problem either (and just ruin another drive). How important is the data?

 

[BadSeagate]

I violated the first rule of computing and that was not making regular back ups. A couple of firms quoted me $1100.00 to recover 14 months of family jpgs and docs. All in all, around 1,000 files. If I'd buy a replacement HD (identical to mine) and swap the circuit boards and be able to recover the jpgs, I'd only spend around $60. If the swap doesn't work, I'm only out $60...and 14 months of family photos. No, the files aren't worth $1,100.00...At least I'm willing to try. So, either tell me I'm crazy, or wish me luck. John.

 

[paparazi]

Badseagate
I'll wish you luck John
It does seem worth the chance and I would put your chances at over 50:50
I also don't see that swopping the ICB over will necessarily damage it, and put a higher than 90% chance that it will work just fine when refitted to the new unit.
Take the normal antistatic precautions, you may also need some small drive bits (sometimes torques drive) to remove the screws that retain the board.
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[BadSeagate]

Thanks for the vote of confidence...John

 

[norty303]

....and even if it doesn't work you've still got a 60gb drive to START doing backups of all work from here on in....

Good luck

 

[BadSeagate]

Thanks, Norty303...I deserve that one...

 

[norty303]

Hehe!! I'm as guilty as the next man.... all my 'backup' drives slowly get filled up with files i'm working on until there isn't enough space for the backups.

Case of 'do as I say not as I do'

 

[crazed]

I'd sure like to know how this works. I am having the same problem with my Seagate HD and was trying to decide whether to replace the circuit board, or cut my losses on the lost data and invest in a new Seagate V SATA drive.

 

[paparazi]

It depends on how valuable your data is, it is still just a percentage chance that this will work, the assumption is that the PCB has gone bad and the actual hardware side is still OK, if this is the case then there is a good chance of data recovery.
Unfortunately you don't know till you try it! and you do need identical drives.
Did Seagate do a Barracuda V SATA? thought it was the newer 7200.7 model that was available as SATA.
Alternative to the seagate would be the new Hitachi 7K250 SATA (best SATA 7,200 in recent Toms Hardware review)
Martin


Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[kd6nem]

When backing up to a second drive, please realize that a drive without an OS will indeed store data, but will be invisible when the main drive is reformatted. (what, no independent FAT? That's what I get for assuming!) I'm guessing that I'll end up using a file recovery utility and have to go through a several thousand files to recover my info. Coincidentally my main drive is also a Seagate Barracuda 60 Gb. It failed under warranty with bad tracks and was replaced, but great ever since. Problem this time was Windows 98SE got unstable very rapidly and gave me less than normal amount of notice. Couldn't repair, so I reinstalled clean. Now other drive is visible to BIOS but not Windows! If anyone has any great ideas howw to less painfully recover the data of the storage/backup drive I'd love to hear it!!!

 

[norty303]

Hehe, that's Karma for you....(shouldn't make cocky remarks on forums, they'll come back to bite you) my primary Seagate woke me up at 6am this morning with a 'crunch, crunch' followed by a post beep, then another post beep, etc, etc. Finally got up to look at the screen and no disk/os found or detected in BIOS. I've just ordered a 120gb Barracuda 7200.7 to replace it, but any comments on what I should try with it bar changing the board and bangin it on the side. It WAS 4 years old and had been spinning virtually non-stop since first switched on and lived in 3 separate cases so it was to be expected really....

Still love em tho...