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[MGhareeb]

I bought a 500GB Maxtor One Touch 4 about 6 months ago. It has been working just fine and I have been using it for backups and storage. A month ago I noticed that it has become a bit slower but after a week or so it came back to normal. Yesterday, I plugged the power cable in, the light came on for a second then it went off and the HDD started to beep. Of course it seems that something is wrong and as I expected it wasn't recognized neither on my PC nor on any other one so I think it has nothing to do with any USB cables or ports. And every time I plug the power in the light goes off and just starts to beep. I heard it has something to do with power supply and I thought that meant changing the power cable but I haven't tried that yet.

I uploaded the beeping sound .

Any help would be appreciated but please don't tell me you have the same problem it won't make things any better.

Message Edited by MGhareeb on 02-15-2010 10:19 AM

[fzabkar]

Can you hear the drive trying to spin up? Any vibration? Did you drop it? Did you overvolt it with the wrong adapter?

If your data are more valuable than your warranty, then you will need to remove the drive from the enclosure and connect it directly to your motherboard. You may want to ask Seagate Tech Support for their OK before you do, though.

[MGhareeb]

No, I don't hear spin ups or vibrations the light just goes off and it starts that beeping. I don't know if it was  dropped or not because I'm not the only one who uses it and I never used any adapter but the one which came with it.

I don't care about no warranty because I don't think there is any customer support in my country. I bought it form The United Arab Emirates and now I'm in Egypt. I heard about that disassembly thing but I'm afraid I might get things worse because I'm using a laptop and all the desktops I have are a bit old.

Thanks anyway man.

[fzabkar]

Don't give up just yet. If you are lucky, then the problem may just be a shorted protection diode.The fix in such a case is to remove the TVS diode by snipping its pins with side cutters. That's all.

If you would like to try, remove the drive from its enclosure and upload a detailed photo of the component side of the drive's circuit board to a file sharing site.

[MGhareeb]

Here is the photo.

[MGhareeb]

Hello?

anybody?

[fzabkar]

Your photo shows part of the bridge board in the enclosure, not the circuit board on the hard drive.

I'm not sure, but the following links *may* refer to your model (ST3500630AS ???).

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/4937/croppeddiode.jpg

http://www.sxdn.com.cn/eWebEditor/uploadfile/sxdn/20090218/20090218162926854.jpg

http://forum.hddguru.com/blown-diode-seagate-500gb-7200-st3500630as-t14092.html

If you still need guidance, then please take a photo of your board.

[MGhareeb]

OK. Sorry for the delay my connection was off for a while.

I connected the HD directly to a motherboard and it still beeps.

I got the photo but it doesn't  resemble any of the ones you referred to. And sorry for the bad quality.

Thanks again.

[fzabkar]

If your PC is powering up and executing the POST, then the drive's protection diodes are OK. The beeping does sound like a seized motor bearing or perhaps a stiction issue. A seized motor is a costly repair. :-(

The following article explains stiction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives

[MGhareeb]

I figured that it was dropped -my brother likes playing football with HDD's- so which is the more likely cause? And can I do it myself? Because I don't trust anyone, especially technicians in Egypt.

By the way I heard some weird stuff about freezing and doing some jerky moves with the drive and don't know if they're jokes or what.

Sorry if I've been bothering you.