Hard drive died, still spins but not recognized. Trying to recover data.

[zaphenomenalone]

I have a FULL Seagate Barracuda 3tb internal hard drive that just stopped working that I would like to recover the data. My big road block in trying to recover the data myself is that my computer is not recognizing that the drive is connected. It has not been physically damaged and has not left the computer in the 11 months that I've had it besides for the rare occasion I add a new part to my computer. It is under warranty so whatever I do I would like not to void the warranty so I can have it replaced once I get the date. Here is what happened.

Last night when I tried to move a file to my hard drive it was really slow and and kept giving me errors. It finally worked and I started watching the file from the hard drive on my media player. Half way through my media player gave me all kinds of errors and the file stopped working. After closing my media player I saw that my hard drive seemed to have been disconnected (It did not show up in "My Computer". I tried rebooting, taking the hard drive out and putting it back in and switching which bay I had it in (I have a case that allows for hot swapping). None of this has worked. When I put it in the computer you can hear it working (all normal noises, no bad ticking or anything). It slows/freezes up the computer as the computer seems to be trying to read the hard drive but after awhile it seems like it gives up and the computer returns back to normal without recognizing the hard drive.

I took it to a local computer shop and they confirmed that it now a dead drive. They said they should be able to recover the data off the hard drive and put it on another drive for $129 or $189 if it proves to be difficult. This is a lot better then the $300 flat fee that Seagate would charge because its under warranty and a *censored* of a lot better then the $600 to $3,000 they would charge if it wasn't under warranty. But since they both say they should be able to recover the data from it I have to assume there is a way for me to do it from home. I have OnTrack EasyRecovery Professional on my computer but I just need a way to get my computer to recognize the drive. If anyone can help me I would be greatly appreciative.

[Salmon Trout]

since they both say they should be able to recover the data from it I have to assume there is a way for me to do it from home.

That is not an assumption you "have" to make. In a simple case, if the failure is purely electronic - on the circuit board - and the platters and heads and the associated very delicate and precise mechanisms are OK, often they can unsolder the circuit board (a skilled job) and replace it with an identical one from a stock of popular drives they keep. If it's worse than that, they may need to disassemble the drive in a top-grade clean room and either mount the platters in an identical drive or else mount them in a special (expensive!) rig and run complex recovery passes with different head alignments to get as much data off as possible, and if there had been a head crash and the platters have damaged surfaces, some data may be beyond recovery. None of these things come cheap, and if the ultimate steps are needed, four-figure sums may be under discussion. It is not economic for an individual to buy the equipment to do these things for one drive. I guess you could buy an identical drive and swap the boards, but you would need to have top level electronic assembly skills and know what you are doing. If you had these, you would not be asking here. As you note, warranty cover would vanish. This is why people make backups of irreplaceable data.

[zaphenomenalone]

Dear Salmon.
Thank you for your snarky reply. I actually knew all these things that you mention (in the great snarky way that you did so). I wasn't asking about taking it into a clean room. I understand that just like with anything there are different levels of expertise that is needed. However, what you failed to address is that the computer store (actually 3 computer stores that I have talked to) are willing to recover the data for between $120 and $130. The one that I took it to has a full understanding of the problem and said they could probably do it for $129. So I am not asking for how to do a $3,000 recovery at home. If a local computer store is only charging me $129 to recover it than I HAVE to make the assumption that the materials needed and the work required is not that much. If you ever been in a computer store you would know that most of them charge around $40 just to do a diagnostic on your computer so $129 would mean that the service is not high on the difficulty scale.

As for you quip about my assembly skills you do not an assumption you can make. I have done a brain transplant on a hard drive (taking the memory from one hard drive that disc stopped spinning and putting it into one that has full working parts). Computer parts are for the most part just like any other parts. However, in that case I didn't have a warranty and I had the exact same hard drive that I didn't have any data on to use for parts.

So instead of being a edited by Allanand telling trying to tell me all the reasons I'm not fit to do, just answer the question or don't respond. Thank you for your time.

[Lisa_maree]

Hi

First can you give me the model number of the seagate drive you say it was running slow and giving errors can you remember what errors you were getting. They could be disk i/o error , disk read error etc this could help to isolate where the fault is. Is it possible you plugged the wrong power supply in as the seagate drive will stop spinning and not be detected if it is over volt aged also if you have a multimeter check the power supply voltage, if it has one, that it is 12 volts. Until you can get the drive working and detecting no software will see it