Old Hard drive Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620A

[somewherenc]

The ST3320620A was the hard drive in the maxtor personal 3200. It is a 320gb drive. I was using it for data storage and some music files. The drive is close to 10 years old.

What was happening is that my computer was not recognizing the drive. I changed USB cables and tried additional USB ports but to no avail. It has had this problem for sometime. I would just unplug it for a short period of time and then plug it back in and my computer would recognize it. But this time nothing worked. I was thinking that maybe the external housing interface was going bad so I took it out and ordered a 2.0 2.5/3.5 external hot swap cable system from Sabrent.com.
The interface plugs in but it never will powered the drive. Yet when I plug to old interface in it powers up but I still get the problem with windows 7 not recognizing the HDD.

1.I hear it spinning but that is it. Would diagnostic tools from Seagate be able to help me even though Properties nor System Management recognizes the HDD.? 2. How does one go about getting new firmware for that HDD (Replace the firrmware board)?

 

[MarkW]

You got 10 years out of that drive. Its time to replace it. Most drives fail in less than 5 years.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there somewherenc,

What is your goal? Do you want to retrieve your data or you just want to keep using the drive?

Either way, I think that the best thing you can do is to connect the HDD internally(keep in mind that this is an IDE drive) and see whether your system will recognize it.

Is the drive recognized by Disk Management when it is in the enclosure? In case it is not, I doubt that you will be able to access it with any kind of software.
In case the HDD is healthy, I don't really think that you need to deal with firmware stuff.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD