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

Jaylob4 said:

I've been reading your thread and you have been industrious.

I can't tell you if your data is lost forever but at this point have you considered a platter swap to a donor HDD case depending on how important the data is.

It is, apparently, a doable home project, ( I have never done it ) and from what I gather, you don't require a clean room but you do require the work area to be super clean.

Thank you for the compliment. You have some information on doing a platter swap? However, I will never do this because I have been instructed to not open this drive under any circumstances by an extreme professional.

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Update:

I got my original pcb board back and my original rom. They did put my original rom on another pcb donor board and the drive does not boot up at all. I do not even think it is allowing power to turn on the drive.

I put my best donor board with a random rom back on the hard drive and get this.

Upload files for free - GPT.jpg - ufile.io

The drive stays on and sounds great. However, I’m afraid to initialize because I know it will erase my data however, even if I do, I will get an i/o error and it wont do it.

…

They emailed me back and said they do not have my ROM Dump on file. I guess they do not want to work with me on that.

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Please on please let me know what device exactly I can buy to get this ROM dump!!! I will post asap when I download it.

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wow. I did not even know PC3000 or MRT Lab could not even fix the problem. What about going around the problem? Can either of these programs help rip the data off the drive RAW?

“Encouraging Sum” I completely and totally understand and respect this. What are we talking here?

I would love to have a healthy ROM Chip on a beautiful new PCB Donor Board.

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“Some drives have a feature called Power Up In Standby (PUIS). If this is enabled, then the drive won't spin up until a certain command is issued. PUIS can be disabled with free tools such as HDAT2.”

How do I get this tool and software? Please help me troubleshoot this. I can buy tools and have them shipped to me.

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“One other feature that may prevent your drive from spinning up inside a PC is SATA power pin #3. This has now been redefined as the Power Disable pin. However this does not appear to be present in your model.”

Do I need some software or hardware to disable this?

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HD-Front

Upload files for free - Front.jpg - ufile.io

HD-Back

Upload files for free - Back.jpg - ufile.io

Repair – Front

Upload files for free - Repair - Front.jpg - ufile.io

Repair – Back

Upload files for free - Repair - Back.jpg - ufile.io

Granted please note they said that the original rom was too damaged to transfer. They did this as a courtesy. I have another pcb donor board that has supposedly a new rom with my original bios information transferred over to it. However, you can see here the "condition” of the original rom. I am hoping all the information can still be transferred from this rom. Its not beat up too bad right?

Both pcb donor boards; the one with the original rom and the new transferred over with the information rom do not power up the drive at all. Zero, zilch, nada.

I can post photos of the new rom and new board if needed as well however, it looks good I believe. If the information was transferred over properly.

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Also, when I have the donor board and a random bios on the hard drive and I plug it in directly to the motherboard and boot into Ultimate Boot CD. I think it can see the disk everything says: zero, zero, zero, i.e. clusters, size, etc. Not sure if I can enabled or disable PUIS when the drive is in this state. I mean None of the programs can read the drive or do a scan.

If I plug in a new board with original bios information the drive is dead and doesn't even spin up or turn on.

How is this happening, can a corrupt rom leave the drive completely dead and powerless and not even turn on?

spunk said:

Seagate Archive HDD Failure. No Crash, No Spin, Silent. Troubleshooting Advice… | Page 3 | Tech Support

We like your perseverance, but I think it' time to cut your losses and move on. Most people have given up trying to help you.

No one has given up. I have two pros helping me right now. Waiting on a tool to dump my rom, then they will evaluate it. One thinks he still can get my Data back.

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Recap:

1-Looks like my original bios was erased.
2-Looks like my original bios was only partially copied over to the new rom.: 512K worth.
3-I have one PCB Donor Board that boots up the hard drive and keeps it running but o/s can't read the data.
4. Data Recovery Place that transferred my bios to another PCB Donor Board, said they don't back up roms and they don't have my rom to email me.

What are my options?

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Well, looks like this is where my journey ends. For everyone that has been thoughtful and kind. Thank you. Looks like with the unexpected crash of this hard drive and the mistakes that I have made, I will not be able to retrieve this data. I will hold onto this drive-in case technology changes in the future or if I become independently wealthy and can afford a “professional recovery service”.


To all the negative people out there. Humans are human. We make mistakes even when we know better. My father has been in computers for over 50+ years in the military. I know a lot about computers and backups. Life got in the way. I have a lot going on right now and the last thing I need is smart aleck comments about backing up data.


Anyhow, I hope everyone has a wonderful day and wish all of you the best of success in life.

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fzabkar said:
I found the problem. There is a stuck bit at this location:

Code:

Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F

00025C10 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00
^^

When I change the 8 to a 0, the CRC becomes 0x0000. :)

F3RomExplorer is happy with the edit. If you can reprogram your ROM after making the change, then hopefully you will recover your data.

I use HxD (freeware hex editor).

Question - Seagate Archive HDD Failure. No Crash, No Spin, Silent. Troubleshooting Advise… | Tom's Hardware Forum

FZABKAR

OH MY GOODNESS! YOU ARE AMAZING! YOU DID IT! PRAISE GOD! YOU ARE A SAINT!

2.82 TB - 3,106,287,262,945 BYTES - 748,329 FILES, 57,259 FOLDERS

TAKING (1) DAY TO COPY! IT'S COPYING RIGHT NOW!

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS MEANS TO ME! THIS WAS MY MAIN BACKUP DRIVE THAT I BACKED EVERYTHING UP TO RIGHT BEFORE IT DIED. I WAS MOVING STUFF AROUND AND PICKED THIS DRIVE TO BACKUP STUFF TOO. I WAS GOING TO ORGANIZE EVERYTHING WHEN I PLUGGED IT IN AND ALL OF A SUDDEN IT WAS GONE.

THIS IS INCREDIBLE!