Needing to acquire HDD Circuit Board from a seagate

[Niclo Iste]

Hey everyone, I've been house sitting and haven't been reading the forum so if you asked me anything I'm sorry I didn't respond. I'm in a dilema. The long story short is, have a client who's got no money so I'm doing charity. Her drive failed. It's a Seagate 500gb Barracuda 7200.11 series ST3500320AS. This is aparantly the pariah of hard drives. I cannot find any where that is selling one for a reasonable price and the places that I assume had have intentionally chosen not to sell them. The history aparantly of this series is it's guaranteed to fail in 6 months or less without warning. Normally I would say sorry it's a lost cause especially if she's broke. Problem is, she's broke due to an on going custody battle to get her daughter back AND she's got all of her research/proof to the courts on this drive. The only solution to this problem is to get a working circuit board as the board is the reason why these fail. If anyone knows where I can find an exactly same series drive or even a working board so I can copy all of her data you'd be a god send. Please if you have any idea of where I can look I would appreciate it.

[CCT]

Some info for you: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807

[Niclo Iste]

HA great find CCT, now I have at least something to work on and something new to learn. I'll have to order the equipment then but still quite interesting. As a side note if anyone has a working board I'd be interested to have that as a backup.

[CCT]

I read through a 4 page thread about those boards - a new/replacement PCB didn't help.

[Niclo Iste]

Hmm now that just sucks. Thanks for the added input CCT

[Guts3d]

Niclo, I'll be happy to donate a 500 gig Western Digital drive to replace the lost one. I checked, and I don't have any Seagate drives like that ( Not that it would help). Sorry!

[TangleWeb]

I know this isn't what you're looking for, but I've used Gillware for data recovery a couple of times personally, we've used them at work once on my recommendation & I've referred several customers to them. Basic data recovery is $378.99 for a Windows based drive. This is MUCH cheaper than traditional data recovery services like Ontrack or DriveSavers.

I know you said she had no money to spend on this, but it sounds like the data is very important to her situation, so it might be worthwhile trying to raise the money to have the data professionally recovered.

~Dave

[Guts3d]

Thanks for the link, Tangleweb. I'll add it to my faves.

[Niclo Iste]

Thanks for the input on the data recovery service. I'll keep that as a final emergency protocol as I'd prefer to try and do the data recovery on my own. I see this as one more challenge to learn from to become more effective for my client base.

[Niclo Iste]

Niclo, I'll be happy to donate a 500 gig Western Digital drive to replace the lost one. I checked, and I don't have any Seagate drives like that ( Not that it would help). Sorry!

Thanks for the offer Guts but it won't be necessary. Since the original is useless there is a replacement coming from the company who sold her the PC. I'm just doing the recovery of the data on my own to help her out.

[CeeBee]

If you are unable to access your data due to this issue, Seagate will provide free data recovery services. Seagate will work with you to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business.

Tried contacting Seagate?

[Niclo Iste]

Yes I have contacted them. Data recovery is pretty much a bold faced lie. They'll reset the firmware for you for free, if that fails they want to charge you for recovery.

[CeeBee]

I'd say give that firmware replacement a try. Chances of you finding a compatible board (down to the firmware level) are quite slim.

[slgrieb]

Seagate seems to be hard at work losing customer good will recently on several levels. I have a customer with a Freeagent that failed after about 3 months, and Seagate wanted to charge a $19.99 FEE for an advance replacement of the drive.