Seagate Archive HDD Failure. No Crash, No Spin, Silent. Help?

Megahertz said:

It seems the hardware controller has failed and must be replaced.
As the disk itself is healthy, the data can be retrieved.
Sorry, I can't help you.

Hardware Controller, you mean PCB Board on the Hard Drive?

NeedsPractice said:

Hardware Controller, you mean PCB Board on the Hard Drive?

yes

Megahertz said:

yes

I see. Well I ordered a new one. I will pop it on and see if it boots up. If it does and comes to life I'll swap out the BIOS chip so I can read the files and quickly make a backup.

Otherwise I will consult with a professional recovery service.

NeedsPractice said:

I see. Well I ordered a new one. I will pop it on and see if it boots up. If it does and comes to life I'll swap out the BIOS chip so I can read the files and quickly make a backup.

Otherwise I will consult with a professional recovery service.

Electronics devices one day will fail. The question is not if but when it will happen.

External drives are more suitable to failures (gyroscopic effect and impacts)

Important data must always be stored twice (on a backup drive).
I use a desktop and I mirror my data every week on a backup drive.

Megahertz said:

Electronics devices one day will fail. The question is not if but when it will happen.

External drives are more suitable to failures (gyroscopic effect and impacts)

Important data must always be stored twice (on a backup drive).
I use a desktop and I mirror my data every week on a backup drive.

Yes, I know that rule. I guess I am Human and I make dumb mistakes. Lesson learned. Well probably not, might happen again. Sad.

NeedsPractice said:

I see. Well I ordered a new one. I will pop it on and see if it boots up. If it does and comes to life I'll swap out the BIOS chip so I can read the files and quickly make a backup.

If the drive is mechanically OK, that should work (I have done it). But what is this BIOS chip you talk about? A chip on the HDD drive circuit? I have never noticed one, and the replacement board I fitted just worked - no chip swapping necessary. Of course, not all boards are the same...

mngerhold said:

If the drive is mechanically OK, that should work (I have done it). But what is this BIOS chip you talk about? A chip on the HDD drive circuit? I have never noticed one, and the replacement board I fitted just worked - no chip swapping necessary. Of course, not all boards are the same...

Was your drive an older drive? I have heard that you can just swap out the PCB Board on older drives and you could boot up your drive and read your files. However, now I believe the BIOS chip that is on the PCB Boards are mandatory for you to read your data for security and calibration reasons. So if you swap out your broken board with a new donor board without swapping out the BIOS chip from the old board to the new board it won't work; unless you are extremely, extremely lucky. I hope I am that lucky.

- - - Updated - - -

Okay, I finally connected the bad drive directly to my motherboard to see if I could see it in my BIOS. Nothing. Can't see a thing. I connected one of the good drives and I could see it perfectly in my BIOS including the size of the partition. So how I can see this bad drive in Windows under Disk Management connected via a usb controller but I can't see it in my BIOS. When it is connected in Windows I can't do anything with it because it wont initialize, but something is connected. Oh wait a minute, I think windows is seeing the USB Controller and the USB Controller is telling windows something is here, however, when windows goes to access the drive through the controller there is no response. Honestly, what I am thinking is that this bad drive is getting zero power. I mean when I hooked up the good drive it immediately powered up and you could hear everything working, spinning, etc. When I hook up the bad drive, absolutely nothing happens, as if the drive never turned on. I think all the confusion is the USB Controller that was enclosed in the External Case is what is causing all of these confusion problems. If I connect the bad drive to the motherboard directly, zero, zilch, nothing. I don't feel anything, no spin, no clunking, not even it attempting to turn on.


What does this mean? Possible bad PCB Board? Or the Drive more than like Seized? I would think that if the drive seized you would hear it power up some and try to do this and that. I am more incline to think the PCB is dead and nothing power/information/commands are even getting to the hard drive.


What do you think?

Yes, I was fixing an old drive. Now why they need to burn dedicated data into a ROM soldered to the board I don't know, but I would say it wasn't worth the effort and cost when you don't know if that will fix it. Note that apparently some manufacturers don't use ROM chips (Maxtor in particular - but they have been acquired by Segate, so that's no use unless it is old, and some on only a subset of their drives - see Hard Drive PCB Replacement Guide

Well, that's one old trick I can forget about!

- - - Updated - - -

Did you order the bare drive (model number unknown) or another STEB8000100 enclusre complete? Because if the latter, it may have a completely different HDD inside. You need to confirm the drive model. It is probably 4 years old (you know when you bought it) - OK scratch that, you say you bought an identical PCB. Can you tell from any info you have whether it has a ROM that needs to be swapped? I'd be interested to hear the result of your efforts!

mngerhold said:

Yes, I was fixing an old drive. Now why they need to burn dedicated data into a ROM soldered to the board I don't know, but I would say it wasn't worth the effort and cost when you don't know if that will fix it. Note that apparently some manufacturers don't use ROM chips (Maxtor in particular - but they have been acquired by Segate, so that's no use unless it is old, and some on only a subset of their drives - see Hard Drive PCB Replacement Guide

Well, that's one old trick I can forget about!

- - - Updated - - -

Did you order the bare drive (model number unknown) or another STEB8000100 enclusre complete? Because if the latter, it may have a completely different HDD inside. You need to confirm the drive model. It is probably 4 years old (you know when you bought it) - OK scratch that, you say you bought an identical PCB. Can you tell from any info you have whether it has a ROM that needs to be swapped? I'd be interested to hear the result of your efforts!

From what everyone is telling me the Bios Rom will need to be swapped out. My personal opinion is that the PCB Board is dead. Once I replace it, i think it will come to life. At least I hope so. I'll keep you posted.

Another Update:


I just got my Donor Board. The drive spun right up and sounds great, no crashes or nasty sounds. It does try twice to read and then gives up so I think there is where swapping out the BIOS is going to work, right? I'll go ahead an order a rework station now to perform the procedure.