Momentus XT, Momentus, Momentus Thin, MobileMax, and other notebook drives

[LouLaBelle]

I have a dell laptop with a Momentus 7200.4 250GB internal hard drive.

This morning the laptop would not boot up stating it could not find the hard drive.

I ran the BIOS diagnostics and they merely reported the same short and sweet error with no additional intelligence.

I have inserted a different HDD into the laptop and it read this fine - so the problem is not with the laptop itself.

I have also tried to put my hard drive into an external mount device (icy box) but there seems to an be an issue with powering the hard drive as this doesn't work either. Hence I am led to believe that the issue is most likely with powering the HDD unit.

I hear no clicks, noises or rattling in the HDD so think it's largely ok.

I need to retrieve the data quickly off it as Dell cannot come on site until Wednesday and I ideally need a solution tonight or tomorrow.

Can I swap the controller card with another similar HDD (but not the same!) and see if it works?

Can the 'power issue' be repaired or the data be retrieved manually somehow?

Thanks for any and all advice. Will continue to browse this forum for poss clues...a lot to go through

Thanks

LouaLaBelle

[fzabkar]

Swapping cards between identical drives will not work. This is because each PCB stores unique, drive specific data in a serial flash memory IC. This IC, or its contents, needs to be transferred from patient to donor.

As for your problem, if you can hear or feel anything, no matter how faint, then it could be that your drive has a stiction fault (heads stuck to platters), or a seized spindle bearing.

[LouLaBelle]

Thanks for responding.

Sounds like good advice not to swap the cards out which I was considering.

There is no noise coming from the drive at all, its perfectly silent, which is what is leading me to believe it is a power supply issue.

I might well send it off to a proper data retrieval company! An electronic failure on a hard drive is usually the cheapest to fix and retrieve data from.

[fzabkar]

If the drive has a PCB problem, then it is not necessary to engage a "data retrieval" company. In fact doing so would be like asking a cardiologist to apply a bandaid to a cut finger.

Instead I suggest that you approach the following PCB suppliers. Each offers a firmware transfer service, either for free, or for US$10:

http://www.donordrives.com
http://www.onepcbsolution.com
http://www.hdd-parts.com

An alternative would be to ask your local TV/AV repair shop to transfer the IC for you.

I would advise that you avoid those suppliers who don't tell you that a board won't work without modification. Often they will attempt to obscure the requirement for a firmware transfer by deceptively describing their products as being "for data recovery only".

In the unfortunate case that your problem is an internal one, then the following company offers fixed price data recovery for US$800 plus parts:
http://myharddrivedied.com

The proprietor is Scott Moulton who is arguably the best known person in the DR business. I have no relationship with him or his company. I would use the above figure as your upper limit when shopping for quotes.