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catastrophic maxtor drive failure, advice?

L

Liver

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 24, 2005
Messages
6,346
I have 2 Maxline III model 7L250S0 (250 gig 16 meg cache, SATA) drives.

One was in the closet, safe.

The other drive was in my system as a backup. It took a serious dump. The logic board (if that is the correct term) fried somehow. One of the chips on the board is blackened to look at it and it certainly smells like burnt plastic.

The drive does not start up at all.

This fried drive was my back up. I have two drives as backups and I rotate them. This maxtor was the last one to get updated. So I am loosing about 1.5 to 2 months of data.

What I have done.

I tested the other drive and it is perfectly fine.

I took the logic board off the undamaged drive and attached it to the damaged one. It spins up and makes some awful sounds. Bios recognizes that a maxtor drive is attached, but no other information is relayed. No information in Windows XP Pro is available. However, once it spins up the sound goes away.

I have no expectations, but before I call it a total loss, any suggestions on anything I should try?

I have already tried hitting it. :D
 
There are some data recovery softwares. If you're willing to pay a bit for them, you can try to recover data from it before you send the drive for RMA.
 
I am willing to pay a modest amount, I definitely do not want to send the drive off for salvage.

I downloaded Maxtor's diagnostics. Opinions?

Or try something better? I don't know where to go with this.
 
Given that a PCB swap didn't fix you, it's likely that your data has suffered some irreparable damage. You could try a program like GetDataBack, but, at this point, you'll most likely get nothing without paying big bucks for professional salvage
 
If Windows doesn't recognize your hardware, you can pay for and run software until you go broke and not get anywhere. It's one thing if BIOS and Windows recognize the drive but it doesn't mount with a drive letter, but when Windows Disk Management doesn't see it you're SOL as far as doing it yourself.
 
Since u have 2 of the same drive (Make sure they are identical on the model #), Back up what you have on the working one and switch the daughterboards (Bottom of drive) and see if itll boot up.. If not.. Get your Credit card ready for an ass thwamping
 
Liver said:
I took the logic board off the undamaged drive and attached it to the damaged one. It spins up and makes some awful sounds.
Click to expand...

Evil Juggalo said:
Since u have 2 of the same drive (Make sure they are identical on the model #), Back up what you have on the working one and switch the daughterboards (Bottom of drive) and see if itll boot up.. If not.. Get your Credit card ready for an ass thwamping
Click to expand...

Great minds think alike :p
 
I guess I shoulda kept reading...

Awful sounds eh.. Well, if it didnt do that before, then u prolly did something wrong.. Maybe try remounting the DB and try again.. maybe try with an external enclosure..

that, or see if your soldering/desoldering skills are up to the challenge of component level replacement..
 
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