Is my HDD dead or recoverable?

[Ben10]

Hey all,

I have a 1TB WD Caviar Green external HDD that isn't working.

Heres some background info, It's external, not an operating system, it stores only my music collection (100+gb)

It was plugged into a mac but has been used on Windows before, it was pulled out of the system and subsequently dropped by a friend grr and now it does not work.

Here is what I've tried an results

Plugging it in in the external case via usb to windows:

Spins up, light turns on and flashes on off on off in a steady fashion (not like it would if it was writing etc) and SOMETIMES it is detected and known as external HDD 1021 or disk 2 but is not initialisable due to an I/O error, and does not show up in windows explorer. It is recognised sometimes in device manager though. Sometimes if its plugged in it just wont detect it at all until i uninstall and reinstall USB mass storage device driver and reboot.

All drivers are up to date (have also used macdrive on windows to see it but does not work, and removed daemon tools beforehand as this is known to have compatibility issues)

ive tried removing from enclosure and plugging it into my rig directly but my rig fails to boot with it plugged in this way until removed, then my rig beeps and it resets and boots fine (this is with bios set to not boot from it)

This also happens when plugged in USB.

CHKDSK not possible as cant initialise disk.

MINITOOL partition home wizard reports 'bad disk' but sees it.

WD advanced format tool occasionaly picks it up but 'failed to format'

HDD regen 11 sees it and reports '0mb in 0 sectors' and on scan crashes (presumable because its trying to scan 0 sectors'

Tried a few other HDD programs including HDD low level format, to no avail, all either don't see it or cannot format due to bad sector or I/O error.

Any advice or insight would be greatly appreciated. There is alot of data on here that is important, it is backed up but on a friends computer and he lives far away, plus id like the drive working regardless.

There is no clicking from the drive, but it does spin up and sound a little frantic, i havent tried freezing it yet that will be a last resort.

My main concern is the 0mb in 0 sectors....

Ive tried booting in a linux environment and mac environment as well as some HDD checking boot disks but nothing seems to work, although the drive is discovered, nothing can be done with it...

Any ideas guys, i think ive exhausted all my personal knowledge

Thanks!

 

[Dogsnake]

Sounds like the drop damaged the interface board in some way. Since it spins and does not make unusual sounds, I would say it is a problem with the drives electronics. Supposing your attempts to recover the drive have not injured the data and it still exists, try contacting WD and explain what has happened. They can replace the electronics. Often they will say not repairable and send a refurb. unit back. Try to get them to give you a repair estimate based on an electronics repair.

 

[Ben10]

take the drive out of casing and connect it directly to the motherboard via sata or ide what ever it is and hope for the best.

Have done this as mentioned, rig fails to boot with it connected regardless of bios settings

 

[maxinexus]

take the drive out of casing and connect it directly to the motherboard via sata or ide what ever it is and hope for the best.

 

[Ben10]

Sounds like the drop damaged the interface board in some way. Since it spins and does not make unusual sounds, I would say it is a problem with the drives electronics. Supposing your attempts to recover the drive have not injured the data and it still exists, try contacting WD and explain what has happened. They can replace the electronics. Often they will say not repairable and send a refurb. unit back. Try to get them to give you a repair estimate based on an electronics repair.

I see, In terms of this i dont have alot of knowledge, maybe you could answer this, but i have another drive, same make and model, if i swapped the interface boards would it work or are the interface board and the actual platters 'married' together via firmware etc?

 

[Ben10]

Just did some digging there is a 'U12' chip on the logic board so you can't swap the logic boards regardless if they are identical as firmware migration is eneded which is far too much effort, any other ideas guys?!

 

[Ben10]

Managed to get this info from a diagnostics test, but cannot do anything else it seems:

 

[fzabkar]

The "0MB in 0 sectors" symptom is characteristic of an internal fault. It does not appear to be board related. AIUI, it usually means that the drive is unable to read one or more of the firmware modules in the hidden System Area on the platters. That said, you could try to clean the preamp contacts with a soft white pencil eraser. You might be lucky ...

Your SMART report omits the raw values of each attribute, but it is clear that the Seek Error Rate has hit rock bottom (1). This could be due to a bad head, bad media, bad spindle motor bearing, or a physical disk shift.

The Current Pending Sector Count has dropped by 2 points (200 -> 198), so I would expect that its raw value (as seen by HD Sentinel, HDDScan, etc) would show several hundred bad sectors.

 

[Ben10]

The "0MB in 0 sectors" symptom is characteristic of an internal fault. It does not appear to be board related. AIUI, it usually means that the drive is unable to read one or more of the firmware modules in the hidden System Area on the platters. That said, you could try to clean the preamp contacts with a soft white pencil eraser. You might be lucky ...

Your SMART report omits the raw values of each attribute, but it is clear that the Seek Error Rate has hit rock bottom (1). This could be due to a bad head, bad media, bad spindle motor bearing, or a physical disk shift.

The Current Pending Sector Count has dropped by 2 points (200 -> 198), so I would expect that its raw value (as seen by HD Sentinel, HDDScan, etc) would show several hundred bad sectors.

This was very helpful, thanks alot, ill crack it open and have a look

Thanks again!