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

[reepicheep]

I have a new computer that has only SATA ports for internal drives, so I mounted my Barracuda 7200.10 Ultra ATA 750 GB drive in an external drive enclosure to transfer files to the new machine.  Two nights ago I accidentally tipped over the drive enclosure.  It did not fall, it just tipped over on a carpeted floor, no significant jarring. The drive unfortunately stopped working.  On startup, the drive hums, then beeps at about nine second intervals.  I think it is not spinning.

I installed an internal PCI-E IDE controller and connected the drive to that, but the response is the same.  The computer does not detect the drive.

I recorded the sounds the drive is making and posted an MP3 here: http://www.starbittrune.com/temp/ST3750640A.mp3

There are files I still need to get from the drive, but I am not prepared to spend the $1600 Seagate quoted me to recover the data.  Is there anything else I can try?  What do the nine-second beeps indicate?

[fzabkar]

It appears that the spindle motor may be seized as a consequence of bearing damage, or you may have a stiction problem, ie the heads may be stuck to the platters.

See this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives

Here are some sound samples from failed drives:

http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

http://web.archive.org/web/20051016010750/http://www.hitachigst.com/hddt/knowtree.nsf/cffe836ed7c12018862565b000530c74/4b1a62a50f405d0d86256756006e340c?OpenDocument

You may like to ask the data recovery experts at the HDD Guru forum for their opinions:

http://forum.hddguru.com/hard-disk-drives-data-recovery-and-repair-f1.html