One thing I've found can help dramatically (and it has indeed fixed a 500GB Seagate HDD) is to remove the controller board and clean the contacts that go from the motor and the heads to the board. My brother did this to his drive that was doing similar things to yours and it's been working fine for a good year now since doing that fix.

Before anything else, have you done the firmware update to the drive? If not, that may fix the problem.

The freezer trick is only really worth trying if the problem is physical (usually bearings or a head issue) - and only for drives that don't use hydrodynamic bearings. I'd maybe try it on a "click of death" hdd that I wasn't too concerned about losing if the freezer trick killed it.

Otherwise, before doing anything that could permanently wreck the drive, plug it in, boot to an OS on removable media (Linux on a LiveCD or LiveUSB drive probably) and see what you can do with the drive. If the drive shows up and the electronics are at least working, you should be able to pull up SMART attributes to at least see what may have happened.

If you can mount it and read files off it, there's your easy backup right there. It could just be that the bootloader or some part of windows is FUBAR, and most of your data is intact - you may even be able to save a bit-exact copy of the disk using dd_rescue. You might also possibly be able to use dedicated file recovery tools (like PhotoRec) to save certain common types of files regardless of filesystem damage (as long as the file itself wasn't damaged, of course).

Appreciate the suggestions. I guess what I'm mostly afraid of is that any further attempts to access the drive (for testing or diagnosis) would only hasten its demise... am I off base there?

My particular model is the ST3500320AS, and apparently it's been known to suffer from a firmware issue that _might_ match my symptoms. On the other hand, the internet is full of reports saying that Seagate's firmware fix has actually bricked working drives, so I'm a bit leery of going that route. Not terribly confident about opening it up and messing with the contacts either, but would try that as a last resort.

Don't think I can chalk it up to the bootloader or some other Windows component (since the BIOS itself intermittently fails to detect the drive).

[edit]: this says that freezing should be safe for this type of drive. Gotta love the Water Anomaly.

You don't have to open it up luckily. It's literally the case of removing the controller board which is screwed to the metal chassis. The points contact the board by pressure and nothing else, making it a very easy fix if you have the correct torx screwdriver. I believe it's due to the materials they use for the contacts that cause them to become dirty and cause intermittent problems. Not saying that this is a 100% sure fire fix but it has definitely fixed a drive for my brother.

I've had the same symptoms with a .12 🙁

Same drive, same problem just last week 😖
I managed to pull the stuff off it in time luckily...I might try the firmware update.

Could be a cold joint somewhere in the controller and this is why I try to keep my drives as cool as possible in the first place but in general drives begin to break down after 15,000 to 20,000 hours with only the good quality samples holding out any further than 30,000 hours. Did the spindle ever have any grinding noises during spin up or power down? Also the head pre amp is known to be the most common problem with drives in general with the controller in second place.

You might have one or two more chances to recover your data on your own and don't use any automated tools/utilities that would just clone the whole volume.

On the other hand, the internet is full of reports saying that Seagate's firmware fix has actually bricked working drives, so I'm a bit leery of going that route.

The firmware update that caused the brick was pulled pretty quickly after its release, and replaced shortly afterwards with a working one. Just be sure to get it from Seagate themselves, rather than some other random third party site which may not have the fixed version.

How about connecting it to a different (fully working) computer, as a plain data disk?
(should be possible to avoid the faulty disk from booting first)

Either via sata-mobo connector, or USB adapter.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/330844336273

While temporarily installing the 1 TB 'rescue disk' there as well.

Granted, it may also make things worse, if mechanical failures is the cause.... 😵
But preventing it from booting the OS, and reading just as a data disk, should at least make sure it does not get damaged by writing attempts... (?)

BTW, how much(GB) precious data are we talking about ?
Partitioned disk (C,D,E etc) or just single area ?
Data is kept on the partition(s) and not C ?

. . .

I did this to my errounous disk, which started to lock completely after being 'online' for a while. And got my data out in sessions, letting it cool off inbetween.
Some few files were unretrievable/unreadable, but still better than nothing....

This was NOT a Seagate drive though 😎

PS: these errors could possibly also be related to faulty memory OR mobo failure (!)
Hence testing readability on different mobo/PC could be prudent.
Of course, all depends on the 'value' of the contents vs risk for more damage...

if your drive is bricked, you can try this:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-so … te-720011-hdds/

other than that, you need to stop trying to use that drive except for dumping all the data you can from it... it is dying on you and you're not really accepting that fact! Why else would you be trying to boot Windows three times?

The 7200.11 Barracudas are notorious for being shitty... it's time to toss the drive!! this is the perfect time of the year to buy a new non-Seagate drive and transfer all the data to it because of the Christmas sales... last month my 1TB Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS (running the latest firmware for a long time) started going really slow on me, eventually Windows crashed.... it failed to reboot because of bad sectors... after many hours of chkdsk /r (does not do low level repairs), I was able to boot into Windows again... but 10 days later, it reared its ugly head again... this time chkdsk /r couldn't really fix everything, I had to run system restore to use backups of my registry and some system files in order to get into Windows... at that point, I knew the drive was dying on me so I ordered a 2TB WD black but it took fucking 10 more days before I got it... I got so paranoid that I stopped installing any Windows updates, I didn't download anything, I didn't install anything... looking back, that is what got me through this because once I got the new drive here, I was barely able to clone seagate!

Acronis didn't work, clonezilla didn't work, I didn't have access to ghost, and being desperate, I downloaded the free version of EASIS and it worked! It ignored all the bad sectors, skipping over it and it took 8 hours to copy the entire drive... once that was done, I rewrote the MBR and boot sector in order to get Windows to boot, but it was a lost cause... various things in Windows stopped working, such as power management... I had to reinstall Windows and all my apps... this took about a week to get me back to where I was! I managed to get 99% of my files, but I still lost some from corruption... I ran a drive test on the seagate and it remapped all the bad sectors, but it was still a downward spiral... the drive kept slowing down at various sections of the disk and when I tried to zero wipe the drive, it killed it for good (didn't make it past the 85% mark)!

That seagate was so new, it didn't even past the 2 year mark... I RMA'd the drive and they sent me its newer version, the ST31000524AS, but was a "recertified" drive... it was a dud... it failed the seagate's own drive test util miserably... it didn't even make it to 5% on the long test to get the click of death.... so I called seagate and they RMA'd this RMA drive and they sent me a brand new one, which works perfectly... I even hacked in a new version firmware from dell which makes it more reliable, faster, and quieter 😁 I don't use this as any OS drive any more... I just don't trust it... it's now used for the swap file and my data files only

it's a good thing you are asking for help... if you didn't, there's a great chance you lose all your data if you keep trying to use that drive
don't bother with those USB adapter things... these seagates are power hungry drives... with any external power supply for hdd use, they're not powerful enough (I have one of those VANTEC adapters, the seagate killed the psu)... you will experience weird issues and you might even make things worse than they are now! DO NOT move the drive... you may make it unusable... leave it where it is now, buy a NEW drive, plug it in, and clone/copy that drive... I recommend Parted Magic if you don't want to pay anything... it's easy to use and free... it will have all the tools you need to copy the drive, such as dd-rescue... if that doesn't work, then make yourself a Bart-PE disc and put EASIS on it... I'm confident it will copy the data from your drive... forget Acronis, it just won't work on bad drives

I too recommend a new firmware before trying recovery, but I don't blame you if you don't want to do that... one thing is certain, DO NOT USE THE DRIVE
DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING ON IT
keep it cool, put a fan next to it if you don't have one already... heat makes things worse in bad situations... use it ONLY for your data recovery

once you are confident you got all the data off your drive, reinstall Windows on the new drive, ensure all your data is intact, wipe the old drive and toss it... you're an idiot if you continue using it... it's dead jim!

Don't worry, I'm not a total moron... the _only_ reason I initially tried booting was to see if I still had time to get some of my data out of there and onto the other HD. Haven't tried using the drive again, and the machine has been powered down since before I started this thread.

I actually have a USB enclosure but would never try it with this drive (even if the power supply was reliable, copying stuff over USB is just incredibly slow compared to SATA and this drive is on borrowed time). Should get a new drive this week, might try BartPE in the meantime and possibly a firmware update if that doesn't work. I don't even need to clone the drive - would be perfectly happy to just copy the files out... most of what I want isn't even on the bootable partition, not that this improves the odds much. There's around 300-400GB of stuff on it, but maybe 10% of that is really critical.

Thanks for the suggestions, all.

if all you're after is copying files, you can do just the same using the Parted Magic live CD... it boots into XWindow and it has a file manager util you can run... it auto mounts NTFS partitions just fine and you'll be able to do what you need to do in there

it'll boot much faster than Bart PE too

oh and btw, Samsung got bought out by Seagate, so some of those new drives are rebadged Seagates now... just FYI

well, BartPE seems to be about as useful as a polished turd - it fails to pick up _any_ SATA drive, including my fully working HD, even after slipstreaming all the latest mass-storage driver packs and fiddling with the BIOS settings. 3 hours of building and troubleshooting down the drain... yay BartPE!

looked into UBCD4WIN, which is newer... but not all that different, and I'm wary of wasting my time with another epic fail. Should I expect similar SATA driver shenanigans with Parted Magic, or does it really live up to the "Magic" part of its name?

that's because XP is a rotting pile of shit... admit it, it's old and can't support new hardware out of the box nor efficiently uses them even with proper 3rd party drivers and updates installed... if your SATA controllers are set to AHCI mode, XP will NOT detect them correctly

just use Parted Magic... it's modern, uses a recent build of Linux and supports AHCI correctly... it worked fine for me, why shouldn't it for you? What are you afraid of?

Going to try a few more things now... but just for the record, I had even worse luck with Parted Magic. None of the boot options do much good - it throws a bunch of SQUASHFS and input/output errors then freezes with a blank screen. I'm sure it could be made to work somehow, but would much rather spend my time on actually copying my data, not on troubleshooting a USB-based solution just to get it to boot.

Hiren's boot cd can be of use LINK.

if neither is working for you then you might need to go into the BIOS and disable AHCI mode... put it back to IDE/legacy mode and it will have a good chance working

I have a Western Digital external drive that is mostly dead at this point. It is also generally detected by the BIOS if it is plugged in at startup. Usually it switches off by itself a minute after powering up; I get the feeling it is trying to read some vital sector of some sort and then giving up and shutting down. I really wish there was some more effective way to investigate it without having to pay thousands of dollars to a data recovery company; maybe I can find a firmware update for this one now.

TheMAN wrote:

that's because XP is a rotting pile of shit... admit it, it's old and can't support new hardware out of the box nor efficiently uses them even with proper 3rd party drivers and updates installed... if your SATA controllers are set to AHCI mode, XP will NOT detect them correctly

But WinPE is not XP.