DEAD HD !!

[leSLIe]

My HD is making noises that are no good, like squeaking when trying to read, it does not go far from POST, its a Seagate Barracuda 200Gb 7200rpm SATA 1, it´s just 8 months old, it is definetively a mechanical problem. I set 15min to be the time in which the HD should stop if there is nothing going on.
I used to have problem with this feature with some Parallel ATA drives but since this is SATA and in theory there a hot swappable i guessed there would be no problem, guess i was mistaken. Now i need to recover the data, but doing so would void the you know what, so how could i then RMA it ?

 

[drizzt81]

I am a little confused but let me see if I understand you:
Your HDD is dieing.
You want to recover your data from it AND RMA it to get a replacement.
You are likely unwilling to pay a data recovery firm for their work.
I assume that you are considering the "Swap the PCB" trick to get your data back, because you have tried regular recovery software and it did not work.
You believe that by swapping the PCB you are voiding the warranty.


So your question is: "How can I swap the PCB without voiding the warranty?"
Short answer: You do not.
Long answer: Although legally objectionable, I do not see a reason why you do not swap the PCB, recover you data, swap back and then send it to RMA. This requires you to be careful and not cause additional damage to the HDD.

 

[Silent.Sin]

If it is a mechanical failure replacing the PCB won't do much for you, I don't see how the drive logic would have anything to do with the motor breaking down or a head getting stuck or something. If there is data on here you *really* need your only option is probably gonna be taking it to a data recovery professional. I suppose you could try that good ol' freezer trick if you're feeling lucky, at this point it might not hurt to try.

As an aside, I would recommend not using that sort of "power saving" scheme to turn off your HD after 15 mins in Windows unless you are on a laptop and need all the juice you can spare. Similar to lightbulbs or car engines, the most stress put on a hard drive's components happens when you first apply power and start it up, when it powers down it just goes through the process in reverse so even that can be dangerous the more times you do it. The more you turn on/off the HD the more likely it is to break. That shouldn't have happened in only 8 months, but it probably isn't helping either.