HDD Will not initialize

[Terabethia]

I have a 3tb Seagate harddrive that died on me last week. I am not entirely sure what could have happened, this drive is only used as storage for my media (movies, tv shows, music, etc).

The drive spins up, no problem. It's still nice and quiet, too, no strange sounds or rattles. But it can't be detected on any machine I have tried (A Windows 10 one that it has always been on as well as a Windows 7 and a Windows 8). It's like it is not even there. Even put it in a sled to try and connect it externally and nothing.

After lots and lots of research, based on the symptoms I narrowed it down to two possible things. The PCB board or the plates themselves. Since the plates sound find, I figured it was likely the PCB board. Now to be clear, I know this is the "last resort' kind of fix, but for me it really was the last resort because while I DO want my files back if possible, I am not willing to spend hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to have them professionally recovered. So it was either this, or I give up and trash it.


I found a donor board online and swapped them out. The good news is... I can see the HDD now!

The bad news is, it's borked.

Under Disc Management it comes up as Disk 5 (no letter) and Unknown. I can not get it to initialize. It also is reporting only 3.86gb, despite being a 3tb drive.

I downloaded HDDScan and ran a report, but I am not sure what to do now. All it comes back with is dozens upon dozens of these "Bad block found, start LBD: 0 Lots and lots of those, various numbers starting at 0 and going up to 8089600.


How do I get this drive back up and running?

 

[maxwellmelon]

sounds like your donor board came from a 4tb hard drive and not a 3tb. that means yes it will see 1tb worth of bad blocks for sure because its expecting to have 4tb worth of platter space. at least you know for sure now that the original PCB was bad.

 

[Terabethia]

So what do I need to do now? I made sure to order the correct PCB board, though of course it is possible they sent the wrong one.

How do I tell it to stop looking for something that isn't there?

 

[Terabethia]

A little more information.

I was able to connect it internally and had the same problem with not being able to initialize, but this time instead of a disk redundancy error I got an i/o device error.

I was able to download and run SeaTools and ran both the long and short test and both passed (makes no sense to me, but they did).

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, Terabethia!

I'd not trust any data with that drive even after the successful PCB replacement and recognition by your system. Unfortunately, there are different kinds of HDD corruption and in your case, it appears to be physical. Sometimes, this kind of hardware damage may not be detected by the software utilities. I'd recommend you check the connections to the HDD again and attempt to plug it in another computer. If the other system gives you the same error, it's probably best you replace the HDD altogether. Your best bet to get your files back when dealing with such issues, is a professional data recovery service.

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD