Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[Francis T]

I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB Drive, which has suddenly died on me.

The drive is actually still under warranty, it is covered by a local Seagate distributor Synnex. They did nothing except to check it and confirm the drive is undetectable, and can only offer a RMA. I have well over 10 years of work on the hard drive, so data is far, far more important than a new replacement drive.

The hard drive died out of the blue; upon starting up the PC I would get a Hard Drive Error in the BIOS.My motherboard has 2 different SATA controllers; regardless of the SATA controller I use the bootup time would take a minute or two longer before I the error "SATA HDD Error, press F1 to continue" shows up. Plugging the HDD to the other controller also ends up with an error message, but it is followed with the word "144PB"

Windows (Disk management, administrative tools) does recognize the drive, but it keeps saying it has be initialized. I tried other HDD repairing/checking tools such as HDTune, which detects the drive but reports it as 0MB in capacity.

I tried a number of HDD repair program but without much luck, either the software doesn't detect the hard drive at all, or sees it but with 0MB.

The Hard Drive sounds perfectly normal, there is no loud clicking or strange sounds. It also seemed to spin just fine.

I did some research and found that there were several 7200.11 Hard Drives that had flawed firmware resulting in drives being undetectable a year or two back. The symptoms seem similar to what I am experiencing now. My hard drive is running the CC1H firmware, which should not be affected though...

Please advice what my options are. As I said earlier, there are some very important data in the drive, and I need them back.

Thanks for reading!!!

[Cantbecanit]

This is what I would do

Get a recovery program trial to see if the data can be retrieved.

If it can buy the full program and get the data back onto terra firma.

Then re-format the drive and a fresh install of the O/S, it's possible your O/S is corrupted and the drive is fine, you can test this with HD Sentinal which will give you a health count, if it says it's 80% upwards I doubt it's only the drive causing the problem.

If you can simply slave it and recover do that, and once you have got the data back try initilising it, it will probably want to format it though, another thing is try giving it a drive letter.

And finally check the data leads are ok, slightly off the port kills O/S especially at boot time, or try another sata lead before anything else, make sure the lead isn't kinked or bent tightly. hth.

[Francis T]

Hi cantbecanit, thanks for the reply; appreciate it.

Some more information on my 1.5TB drive:

-The OS is not installed on this drive; I had another drive for the OS (Win 7 Ultimate), this drive is only for data storage.

- I have tried a lot of recovery programs, but none of them work. they either don't detect the drive at all, or the ones that does detect the drive sees the drive with 0MB in capacity; and refuse to proceed.

I think the average, off the shelf recovery software won't work, this is not one of those corrupted files/partition scenarios, I think this something far more serious, far lower level.

- I have already swapped the SATA cables, no luck; also tried it with another PC. Didn't work. I have already taken it to a Seagate repair center, they confirmed the hard drive can't be detected.

-I've got another Seagate 1.5TB Drive (same model) that I had gotten from RMA a month ago, I tried to swap the PCB motherboard, but that didn't work either. However the manufacturing date of the HDDs are quite far apart, so I'm not too surprised that PCB Swap won't work.

I have heard of a software PC-3000, from Ace Labratories, I've heard its one of the most powerful HDD repair tool. Has anyone tried it before?

Thanks again for reading...

[Cantbecanit]

Try one called PowerDataRecovery.

Is the drive showing up as RAW in properties?

[Francis T]

Hi there again, thanks for the reply.

I just tried the MiniTool Power Data Recovery, no luck, I'm afraid, as it detects the drive, but sees the capacity as 0 Bytes.

I've attached a screenshot of it.

The drive does not appear in My computer at all. I could only see the drive in the Disk Management within Administrative Tools.

Any clues? Thanks again!

[Cantbecanit]

See if you can assign a drive letter, don't format it though.

If that doesn't work, do a quick format and then scan it with recovery software, the quick format should re-set the tables and will only cost you a small amount of data, only do this when all other routes are blocked though.

[Francis T]

Hi there.

It is not possible to assign a drive letter. In fact the instant I open the Disk Management it tells me my drive is not initialized, and I must initialize it. I stopped right here. Screenshot attached.

Although I have a hunch considering the damage of the HDD I doubt I would be able to format/initialize it at all..

And one more thing, I also tried using Seatools. Seatools was able to detect the model, serial, as well as the Firmware Revision. However it managed to fail ALL tests (Short Generic, Long Generic, Short Drive Self Test, S.M.A.R.T Check)

Thanks again for helping!

[Cantbecanit]

To have a chance of getting data back I would initilise it but only quick format it before doing a recovery on it, if it's failing all those tests it sounds like it's a gonner, so getting the data off while it still spins is most important, doing a quick format will only rub the table out, the rest should still be a readable image to a recovery program.

[Francis T]

Hi there,

I tried to initialize the disk in the disk management, but all I got was "The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."

I have also tried Seatools for DOS, the error seems to be the Hard Drive is not responding to commands.

May I know under this circumstance is the problem with the motherboard PCB, or is it a problem inside the enclosure?

I am considering getting a second hand ST31500341AS, that is of similar age (around 1.5 to 2 years), and same firmware (CC1H) and swap the PCB.

If that still won't work I think I am out of options....

Please advice, thanks!

[Cantbecanit]

I/O error could be your sata lead is playing up, check it's not bent,kinked or unsecure on the ports.