Maxtor 20Gb Hard Drive Spins, Clicks, Detects, Fails.

[Information21]

Hi, let me describe the situation.

I've had a Maxtor 20Gb (model 52049U4) hard drive for some time now. I haven't had many problems with it (minor things). Recently I had a small IC burn out (many of you may remember my thread a while ago about it) and the advice I got was to get an identical drive and swap boards. It's been sitting for a while waiting for repair.

I bought an identical drive (manufactured the same day) and I switched out the old board. Well it spins up now (which it wouldn't with the old board) but it clicks and clicks and clicks for a few seconds and then stops clicking. It's still spinning the platter but the head won't read. Now up until I swapped the boards I had no problems with the drive spinning up or clicking or anything of the like.

The drive spins up, clicks, stops clicking, remains spinning, gets detected by the BIOS but then I get the error "PRIMARY SLAVE FAIL" which means it can't read it.

I've read many messages boards and newsgroups looking for a solution but all I find is "Pack it up and send it back." This is ok advice, and I will but I need to get the data off first. If I hadn't needed the data I would have gotten an RMA long ago.

I need to know if I can get it to stop clicking for a few mintues to boot and for me to retrieve the data. Is this possible?

I thank you in advance.

 

[copyfixer]

Try running the drive outside the case at a 90 degree difference from the way it is mounted in the case. Try it both side to side and end to end. It might work enough to get the info off of it. Another thing is to cool it in the freezer 15 minutes and power it up cold. I've heard these tricks help sometimes.

 

[Information21]

I've tried it flat, upside down, on it's right side, on it's left side, on it's front, and on it's back. I also had it tiltled at many angles. At one point I held it and gently moved it around as it was clicking. None of these work. I'm going to try the freezer job. I had read about it several times but I wasn't sure if it was a suggestion for my problem.

Off to freeze, I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks.

 

[Information21]

Freezing did nothing. Any more ideas?

 

[copyfixer]

My thoughts are to give up and RMA the drive. It might well be that the drive is what burned out the first board and is now working on the second board. I'd flip it back before the second goes out too. The other solution is $$$ ...... send it to an info retrieval company. My wife had to do this at her office once. It ran about $1,000 to get the info off a drive, but they did it.