Dead Hard Drive

[Alcomo]

So I had a call from my friend today. Asked me if I could fix his computer for him. Every time he started it up he would get a message about the drive being bad, replace it with the option to hit F1 to advance. I told him his drive was dead and sold him a spare 250gb I had. Im just wondering if there is any way to actually fix this drive. Its a 500gb 7200 seagate barracuda. I have it plugged into my build now, still booting off my normal drive, but my computer will not boot with it attached. There are no sounds of anything loose and whatnot and its powering up and spinning. Just wondering if anyone knows any possible things I could try to get it working again? Don't want to scrap it without making sure its dead as dead can get.

[Deleted]

I have had success before in resurrecting dead hard drives before by changing the circuit board on it to one of identical make / model that you know works, but finding one that fits the bill is going to be a pain. eBay is your best bet.

Considering the fact that it won't boot with it attached suggests it's a problem with the board and not with the drive itself. But don't take it as gospel - no guarantees a board swap will fix it.

[Milkshake86]

You can't boot w/ it plugged in only or w/ both HDD's?

[Alcomo]

I plugged it into my extra sata slot but still booted off my main drive with windows 7 and it just caused my comp to freeze up. It comes up saying the same thing on my computer about the drive being bad, replace it. I thought I might have had the boot order wrong but I double checked and it was booting from my good drive. It made it into my desktop once which I found strange, but the bad drive didn't show up.

[Sephiracle]

I've had that issue with a prior drive as well. Didn't matter if I was booting off a perfectly fine drive or not the computer would refuse to boot and even if it did it wouldn't detect the drive. Never managed to get it fixed, replacing it was just much quicker and easier.

[D_K_night]

if you're not hearing the dreaded CLICK...WHIRRRRRR looping sounds, then yes the board could be fried, but as someone above me already stated, trying to source that board will be a pain as manufacturers don't exactly make it easy to do-it-yourself when a hard drive dies. they want you to just buy a new drive.

IMO if the drive fails detection no matter what you do, I wouldn't spend too much more time on it. if you are desperate to get the data off of it, you'll need to have big cash ready for the data recovery boys.

[Alcomo]

Thanks for the help everyone! Ill probably just toss it. My friend already got a working drive off me and hes not to worried about the info on his old one. Just to bad I can't get it working again for free, would have made his day (although lost me my $50 bux for the drive I sold him lmao)