Un-bricked Second Seagate Barracuda Hard Drive
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!
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!
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Anywho... Nice work Q. That's a pretty amazing workaround.
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 treat data recovery different than other services. The rates are higher, because the level of knowledge and skill required is higher.
That was just a bonus.