Internal Seagate 1TB drive unaccessable shortly after boot

[nihilunder]

Info:

Asus P7H55-M motherboard
Intel i3 CPU
3 GB DDR3 RAM
Main drive WD 500 gigs, secondary drive Seagate 1TB (both SATA)
Windows XP SP3


2 days ago the 1tb drive started displaying "Delayed Write Failure" error with notifications that data could not be written for $MFT and the root directory.  I backed up the most important stuff and rebooted, and the BIOS reported that the drive was not detected (but knew which SATA port to say it wasn't detected on).  Windows didn't see it either.

I shut the computer off and switched SATA cables and ports; it was detected and worked fine, but I continued to get these errors.  A reboot caused it to not be seen during boot again, but switching ports "fixed" it temporarily.

Yesterday it quit being usable.  Windows could see the drive and how much was used, but when I tried to access all that came up was $LDR$.  A few minutes later the drive disappeared from the menu.

This drive is less than a year old.  Could it really be a hardware failure so soon?

[JJ 3000]

Check the drive with SeaTools.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

[nihilunder]

Can't.  Windows doesn't see it, but after a fresh power up the BIOS will.  I used SMART on it, which reported back fine.

Can this utility be run outside windows?

[JJ 3000]

Yes. Get the ISO CD-ROM Image here:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seatooldreg&vgnextoid=480bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD


Look at the tutorial here:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=201271&NewLang=en


You will need a program that can burn disk images to make the disk. If you are not sure if you have one you can use ImgBurn. Get it free here:
http://www.imgburn.com/


If you're not sure how to burn the disk there is a guide here:
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/G/Burning+ISO+Images+with+ImgBurn

[nihilunder]

Yes. Get the ISO CD-ROM Image here:
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=seatooldreg&vgnextoid=480bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD


Look at the tutorial here:
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=201271&NewLang=en


You will need a program that can burn disk images to make the disk. If you are not sure if you have one you can use ImgBurn. Get it free here:
http://www.imgburn.com/


If you're not sure how to burn the disk there is a guide here:
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/G/Burning+ISO+Images+with+ImgBurn

I booted into the Seagate utility and it found 73 bad sectors.  This explains why I can see the drive, even see what's on it when not in Windows, but it dissappears as soon as I try to access any data.  There wouldn't happen to be a way to copy anything off of it before it dies completely would there?

[Computer_Commando]

Was the Seagate utility able to relocate the bad sectors?  If not, there is only 1 utility I am aware of which has a good chance of repairing the bad sectors.  The downside is, it costs $89.  http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
If the drive is still under warranty, get an RMA from Seagate.