Seagate HDD not detected by BIOS

[tehach]

The secondary drive on my HTPC died yesterday. At least it is no longer detected by the BIOS or operating system, but it still spins and sounds like it is working. It was 4 months old, didn't give any warning, and was used to store a lot of movie and music rips. I checked the cable and controller, both work fine with another drive. Drive was pretty warm when I removed it. Without this drive, computer works fine.

Any ideas on what happened or how to recover my data? Does this sound like a dead PCB on the drive? Maybe a candidate to try to swap in another PCB and recover?

TIA.

System:

Dell XPS Quad core
3 Gb Ram
Vista

Drive:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB
ST31000340AS
Firmware: SD15
Date Code: 08466
Site Code: KRATSG
Thailand

 

[taltamir]

Try cooling the drive with a large (aka, 12 inches or more) fan directly on it, while it is placed outside of the case ideally... but on something insulated, not on the case, or it will short out on it...

option one: toss it in the trash and regret not having used raid or backups.
option two: get a data recovery company to get the data for you... costs about 300$ or so.

 

[Modelworks]

Forget the swap trick with new drives, 500GB+
They put the firmware and boot up information for that drive on the platters .It is generated at the factory on first boot of the drive and is different for every drive. Unless you happen to get one that has the exact bad sectors as the one you are swapping, odds are really against this.

Try the freezer trick.
It can cause a bad connection on the pcb to contract and work long enough to recover.

 

[taltamir]

if you do put it in the freezer, make sure it is in an airtight bag
water = bad

 

[tehach]

Thanks, I'm going to try the freezer trick.

 

[taltamir]

did it work?

 

[LordSnailz]

crap, I have the same issue, and it's on my main bootable drive. Worse of all this I just got the drive put everything on it and don't have any backups yet.
Searched all around google and seems like many seagate drives are seeing the same issue ... anyone else have the same issue?

I've also read to avoid the freezer trick ...

 

[sssaaxx]

I have the same issue here. have 2 exactly the same hard drives.(Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB) one is working fine(for now), but the other is not detected in bios, no matter what I do. it is brand new, less then two months old. what is wrong with those discs?. Can we save them? should we ever buy another seagate hd? I want to buy new seagate barracuda 1.5 TB, but is it worth the risk? Anybody have any answerrs?

 

[neothe0ne]

Originally posted by: sssaaxx
I want to buy new seagate barracuda 1.5 TB, but is it worth the risk? Anybody have any answerrs?

I've been using one as my "data' hard drive for a week or so (still using a Maxtor 300gb for my two OS's) and it seems fine. I even have firmware SD17 and haven't had any of the supposed freeze issues yet (or maybe I just don't notice them because I'm not running RAID)

 

[sssaaxx]

mine was working fine for allmost two months. but now bios just can´t detect it anymore. the other one is a one month older, but is working fine. for now at least. what is that about firmware SD17?? Is that what could be the broblem? can you explain it to me please. thanks!!

 

[djyanu]

If you still have that broken seagate drives i'm interested in helping you guys get your data back, just send me an private message!