HDD Not working anymore! HELP no spin, not recognised...

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
C

cd0g445

Honorable
Sep 15, 2013
4
0
10,510
A few months ago i was transferring my PC into a new case and the sata plastic connection broke off! Since then i have still been using it but (carefully) placing the sata connection on the pins and it still worked. However, yesterday i installed a new heatsink and in the process the connector for the hdd fell out and bent a pin. Since rebending the pin i cannot get the bios to recognise the HDDs existance at all and once it said "boot error, press any key to restart" hundreds of times.

I went to PC World today ( i know...) and got them to try and connect it but they got no signal to the laptop they were using from the hard drive. The guy there said i should replace the PCB. Since then i've found identical firmware and id numbers etc.. on hard drives that could do the job. He also said that hard drive data recovery from there would not be possible due to the broken data connector. (All the pins are there but slightly bent out of place). I'm not sure if the problem is with the connector or PCB or the HDD itself.

My HDD is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320gb

I looked for my backups on my external hard drive and it turns out they all failed. :(

Anyway, my question is:

Do hard drives spin if connected with power but not to computer (whilst computer is turned on)
Should I replace the PCB?
Is there a way to tell if the hard drive still works at all without the SATA connector?
Is the HDD or PCB faulty?

In any other case, what should i do?
 
Solution
spdragoo
Even if the pins are bent you should be able to carefully bend them back so that you can connect the data cable. I had the same thing happen -- was trying to clone my WD Green drive onto a WD Black (was only using the Green because of a former reinstall issue involving motherboard replacement) & the plastic part broke off & didn't like being superglued back in. I was able to get the data cable secure enough to clone the drive (Acronis True Image Premium), so now the WD Green is essentially just a backup drive.

Basically, though, unbend the pins enough to either take the drive to a data recovery company, or to pull the data yourself by using a 2nd drive to reinstall Windows. Either way, do it as quickly as possible.
Sort by date Sort by votes
I

i7Baby

Titan
BANNED
Jul 25, 2012
44,084
2
106,960
They need a read or write request before they'll spin = sata data.

Replace the pcb if you can buy one and replace it OK.

No - you need the sata connector to tell if the HDD works

The PCB is faulty - that's where the pin is joined to.

If you can't get the hdd working your self, you can pay a data recovery service to put the data onto a new hdd. Costs a lot.

Or buy a new hdd, install windows, install all the mobo and other drivers again, install all your apps and go forward from there. But be more careful handling stuff.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
spdragoo

spdragoo

Splendid
Ambassador
Oct 17, 2011
3,166
8
27,115
Even if the pins are bent you should be able to carefully bend them back so that you can connect the data cable. I had the same thing happen -- was trying to clone my WD Green drive onto a WD Black (was only using the Green because of a former reinstall issue involving motherboard replacement) & the plastic part broke off & didn't like being superglued back in. I was able to get the data cable secure enough to clone the drive (Acronis True Image Premium), so now the WD Green is essentially just a backup drive.

Basically, though, unbend the pins enough to either take the drive to a data recovery company, or to pull the data yourself by using a 2nd drive to reinstall Windows. Either way, do it as quickly as possible.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
F

fzabkar

Judicious
Sep 22, 2010
9,327
722
36,390
Seagate's 7200.10 models can be repaired with a straight PCB swap. I believe that you just need to match the firmware version.

As for the SATA connector, a competent repairer should be able to hardwire a SATA cable directly to the SATA Tx/Rx traces on the PCB.

A DIY solution should cost no more than about US$40.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
F

fzabkar

Judicious
Sep 22, 2010
9,327
722
36,390
I should add that some drives (eg some Samsungs) do require that a SATA host be present before the drive will spin up. However, I don't know whether some Seagate models also behave this way.

One other possibility is that a drive may be configured to Power Up In Standby (PUIS), in which case it needs a particular command to spin it up.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom