Hard Drive Crashed...Servo not working

[WildViper]

I just bought a Seagate 200Gig drive about 4 weeks ago. Well, all of a sudden today, it didn't start up. It is making these weird sound as if it wants to go, but can't.

I talked with Seagate and they said it was the Servo going out. So my question is, is there any way to recover the data from this?? I have to return it to them to replace but, would rather try and recover the data somehow.

Thanx for any help.

 

[S0Y73NTGR33N]

I would call your local computer specialty stores because I think there are ways of pulling data even off a bad hard drive... but it might cost a pretty penny.

-green

 

[WildViper]

I was wondering if anyone has tried opening a harddrive and tinkering in it. I think I may have to try that since I do not have any speciality computer stores next to me that I feel confident about.

Anyone?? Can I just replace the Servo motor from another drive?

 

[tshock22]

Just a reminder to have a drive prepared/ready for a data dump should you manage to get it spinning again. You may only have one shot to do it. I've personally seen a drive which refused to start up get persuaded to go with a couple of shakes/knocks. What was really funny is the guy was so paranoid about it going out again he actually stood there holding the drive perfectly still while someone at the keyboard dumped the data. I only recommend trying this if you've totally given up and are about to send it back.....

good luck

 

[WildViper]

Well I just talked to a couple of Hard Drive recovery speciliast companies and they said the cheapest way for me to do this was to replace the circuit board from another identical drive. I am going to try this and post my results here.

They also mentioned that I have to make sure the circuit board is exactly the same...sometimes manufacturers use different circuit boards on the same drive and that can really fry the drive if mismatched.

Time to go buy a Seagate 200gig drive again. Will see what happens.

I will be ready to dump the files immediately for sure. ANy other advice before I unscrew this thing later today?

 

[WildViper]

Ok..after switching out the circuit board(pretty easy I may say), the HD still didn't spin up. THat left me no choice but to open up the HD. So I did. WOW..those platter are super clean and shiny!!!

anyways, I tinkered with moving around the head by moving around a plastic thingy..not directly moving the head...and lo and behold..the platters started to spin and everything seems to work ok now...as far as mechanically that is.

My bios recognizes the drive correctly. But, my data is not readable....as I said before, this was for storage only so no OS on it.

Anyways, does any one know any DOS based utilities that I can use to copy/restore the data?

 

[Homerboy]

if its a servo (per seagate) then the controller board wouldnt do anything.

Why not make the drive a slave on a windows machine and use some datarecover program (so many to choose from)

 

[WildViper]

Well problem is that WinXP won't boot with this faulty HD on as slave. It gets stuck in the booting process. I have tried all modes..safe mode and all...nothing gets it into WinXP. That is why I need the DOS based utils. Thanx

 

[ThePiston]

check out spin rite at www.grc.com, it will recover any data usually.

 

[WildViper]

ok..tried Spintrite but that didn't work. I guess cause Spinrite does something different than what I am looking for.

Spinrite fixes bad sectors and stuff..it doesn't fix boot records or partition table info and such.

 

[ThePiston]

how about Partition Magic? Or Encase... that's a security program, but I think you can use it to recover just about any information that's ever been on your computer. Never used it before though.