Another 7200.11 dead

Sent my dad's other 7200.11 into seagate for RMA as it died. Got it back yesterday and now his other (had it in RAID1) is dead. Now all his data is gone as we didn't put in the other drive yet and re-establish the RAID system

What are our options for data recovery as he needs this information.
Is this something that only a professional can do? What are we looking at price-wise. It is about 150-200GB of data he needs recovered. The drive spins up, it is just not recognized by the BIOS or my USB Thermaltake BlacX

Damn these .11 series drives

well if you got one drive back from RMA, thats working and a bad one try swapping the pcb's

Well sometimes you can get lucky and it's only the backplane that died. I'd take the backplane off the new drive you got and put it on the old drive and cross your fingers!

*no fair nd4, my internet is slower I posted that WAY before you! *

I've never taken apart a hard drive before....So a little weary about it. I think I may have a dead one somewhere else...Maybe I will take that apart first as a test so I know what I am getting into.

Are all drive's internals the same? The one I will be taking apart is an 60GB Maxtor IDE. Would it be different than the SATA or pretty close?

Oh boy those torx screws are TINY....Any chance I'd have luck finding it that small at a local hardware store or will it be an online purchase?

EDIT: And shoot I noticed the RMA drive's firmware is different -- (SD1A vs SD15)...switching the PCB's may not even work anyway.

ps2cho said:

Oh boy those torx screws are TINY....Any chance I'd have luck finding it that small at a local hardware store or will it be an online purchase?

EDIT: And shoot I noticed the RMA drive's firmware is different -- (SD1A vs SD15)...switching the PCB's may not even work anyway.

Click to expand...

as long as the pcbs are the same (IE same model number drive) you should be good... the firmware is different due to the fact that the dead drive had obviously faulty firmware and your RMA'd drive has the newer firmware

It shouldnt be hard to swap pcb.s 3 or 4 torx screws just be carefull when you remove the pcb that there might be a ribbon cable or two attached to the pcb to feed internal components. Often times its a socket or pin and pad type of thing so there are no ribbon cables.

You should be able to get the proper torx head at a local hardware store no prob btw.

Ok I just switched the PCB's and no luck
I figured it was not going to work because they have different firmwares. When I did swap though it made some light clicking noises. After I put the original PCB back in, no clicking noises so there is obviously a compatibility issue between them. I unfortunately do not have another working drive that contains the same firmware (SD15).

Do I have any other options here? Anybody happen to have an SD15 PCB they would be willing to let me test out and send back maybe? (with compen$ation of course)

They look identical though but I can't rule it off until I can establish that the firmware is not the issue.



If the BIOS does not recognize it, there is no point trying different OS' or software, right?

ps2cho said:

Ok I just switched the PCB's and no luck
I figured it was not going to work because they have different firmwares. When I did swap though it made some light clicking noises. After I put the original PCB back in, no clicking noises so there is obviously a compatibility issue between them. I unfortunately do not have another working drive that contains the same firmware (SD15).

Do I have any other options here? Anybody happen to have an SD15 PCB they would be willing to let me test out and send back maybe? (with compen$ation of course)

They look identical though but I can't rule it off until I can establish that the firmware is not the issue.

If the BIOS does not recognize it, there is no point trying different OS' or software, right?

Click to expand...

let me see if i can find the link... there was a semi complicated process to revive the drive. via COM.

check this
http://forum.hddguru.com/tutorial-resolve-lba-seagate-7200-bios-don-recognize-t11040.html