Un-bricked Second Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive

QCHQCH Ancient GuruChicago Area - USA Icrontian
edited March 2012 in Hardware
MAN O MAN... I just saved a customer $2,000 by un-bricking their Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive from their 4 year old Dell. I JUST wiped and installed Windows 7 on it about 2 months ago and they called today complaining that it was dead. I admit, I was stumped when I got there and the hard drive wouldn't spin and the BIOS didn't see it.

Hmmmmmm.... where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, another customer that had the same issue 18 months ago. Could it be that the hard drive is a Seagate and it bricked itself??? I took the PC home, and removed the drive and it WAS a Seagate 7200.11. The next question, did I keep that jury-rigged serial to terminal thingy? I DID... about an hour of getting my spare rig to see the COM port, setting up a putty session, and following the fairly well written directions and it works!!! I am so happy and the customer will be too. That is $70 in my pocket and they are saved the cost of a new hard drive and all that lost data!

Comments

  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    Should have charged them a lot more than $70.
  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    Should have charged them a lot more than $70.
    Not everyone is into gouging their customers. Some of us have ethics.
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    Yeah, but gouging your customers is cool. Then they think you worked your ass off to fix their problem!

    Anywho... Nice work Q. That's a pretty amazing workaround.
  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    I charge $35 an hour if I do the work from home. $50 an hour if I am forced to visit and fix an issue. I'm just happy they didn't go to Best Buy. They would have been charged a bunch more, had to buy a new, over priced, hard drive, AND still lost the data.

    This whole firmware and SMART stuff on hard drives makes me wonder how many other drives have issues that could be fixed by just messing with the firmware.
  • quake101quake101 Ohio Icrontian

    This whole firmware and SMART stuff on hard drives makes me wonder how many other drives have issues that could be fixed by just messing with the firmware.
    I was thinking the same thing.

  • QCHQCH Ancient Guru Chicago Area - USA Icrontian
    Another example... I swapped controller cards on two working identical drives but with different firmware... both started clicking like they were dead. So even the tell tail signs of physically dead drives might not be really dead but a bad board or firmware.
  • RyanMMRyanMM Ferndale, MI Icrontian
    I charge $35 an hour if I do the work from home. $50 an hour if I am forced to visit and fix an issue. I'm just happy they didn't go to Best Buy. They would have been charged a bunch more, had to buy a new, over priced, hard drive, AND still lost the data.
    Best Buy would simply not have been able to fix it, they would've sent it out for high-end data recovery at a ridiculous sum.

    I treat data recovery different than other services. The rates are higher, because the level of knowledge and skill required is higher.
  • boasistboasist Troy

    I treat data recovery different than other services. The rates are higher, because the level of knowledge and skill required is higher.
    Exactly. I guess it's just easier to hate on Tim.

  • mertesnmertesn I am Bobby Miller Yukon, OK Icrontian
    I treat data recovery different than other services. The rates are higher, because the level of knowledge and skill required is higher.
    That's certainly understandable, and I do the same thing because it's such intensive and time-consuming work.
    Exactly. I guess it's just easier to hate on Tim.
    That was just a bonus.
  • TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
    I do data recovery, but only on working drives. Usually it is home users who have their computer so loaded with viruses you can't do much of anything with it. I run the PC on an Ubuntu Linux CD, find their files, save them off to a flash drive or external hard drive, then format it, reload everything, re-add their files, and I am their hero!
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