How to know if HDD is truly dead.

[Jae Tee]

I received a number of hard drives from a liquidation sale, and not surprisingly most are not working. However I want to know if there are more trouble shooting steps that i am not taking. 

[Founders]

Run Seatools on them. If they're not visible in Seatools when you plug the drives in you'll know the controller for the HDD's are bad. If they are visible run the tests and see if they pass. 

[Sir0Tek]

In case these drives are the same series you may have an easy option to get 1 good out of 2 bad ones. Some drives will possibly have a bad controller-circuit while others may fail mechanically. Theres a good chance the ones which are unresponsive and/or do not even start spinning and/or  aren't recognized in bios are mechanically good while those that are recognized and do spin-up but repeatedly fail will have a good controller.

[Jae Tee]

50 minutes ago, Founders said:

Run Seatools on them. If they're not visible in Seatools when you plug the drives in you'll know the controller for the HDD's are bad. If they are visible run the tests and see if they pass. 

Will definitely give that a shot, thanks. 

48 minutes ago, Sir0Tek said:

In case these drives are the same series you may have an easy option to get 1 good out of 2 bad ones. Some drives will possibly have a bad controller-circuit while others may fail mechanically. Theres a good chance the ones which are unresponsive and/or do not even start spinning and/or  aren't recognized in bios are mechanically good while those that are recognized and do spin-up but repeatedly fail will have a good controller.

Most are not but we'll see...

[Founders]

1 minute ago, Jae Tee said:

Will definitely give that a shot, thanks. 

No problem 

[PianoPlayer88Key]

I agree with the others about running diagnostics software, like SeaTools that's been mentioned.  (I also like various SMART tools & similar, WD lifeguard, etc.)

 

Also, for me, how I personally define drives between healthy and dead are:

• Healthy = No issues at all.
• Ailing / Sick / Ill / Infirmed = drive still "can" be used to read & write data, but SMART shows various errors, like reallocated / pending / uncorrectable sectors (even if only 1 on a HDD, although SSDs are allowed to have more as long as it doesn't spike suddenly), read / write / CRC errors, etc.  SSDs with low life remaining (like < 5-10%) may also be here.
• Comatose = drive is not detected in BIOS or by the OS at all, but does mechanically or electrically power on, although it may likely make odd noises.  (For failed mechanical but still "working" electrical, you might need a pro with a multimeter measuring the right parts to determine if the drive is only comatose and not dead.)
• Dead = drive completely unresponsive, "no pupil dilation response to bright light" (or whatever, to borrow a medical term), as if you never plugged it in.  If it can't be resurrected even after a professional data recovery company has replaced all parts (spindle motor, platters (this would seal the data's fate), heads, armature, outer casing, PCB and its individual components, etc), and you've tested it with another known working computer (to be sure that isn't part of the issue), then it's truly dead.

 

[Jae Tee]

On 12/19/2019 at 9:01 PM, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I agree with the others about running diagnostics software, like SeaTools that's been mentioned.  (I also like various SMART tools & similar, WD lifeguard, etc.)

 

Also, for me, how I personally define drives between healthy and dead are:

• Healthy = No issues at all.
• Ailing / Sick / Ill / Infirmed = drive still "can" be used to read & write data, but SMART shows various errors, like reallocated / pending / uncorrectable sectors (even if only 1 on a HDD, although SSDs are allowed to have more as long as it doesn't spike suddenly), read / write / CRC errors, etc.  SSDs with low life remaining (like < 5-10%) may also be here.
• Comatose = drive is not detected in BIOS or by the OS at all, but does mechanically or electrically power on, although it may likely make odd noises.  (For failed mechanical but still "working" electrical, you might need a pro with a multimeter measuring the right parts to determine if the drive is only comatose and not dead.)
• Dead = drive completely unresponsive, "no pupil dilation response to bright light" (or whatever, to borrow a medical term), as if you never plugged it in.  If it can't be resurrected even after a professional data recovery company has replaced all parts (spindle motor, platters (this would seal the data's fate), heads, armature, outer casing, PCB and its individual components, etc), and you've tested it with another known working computer (to be sure that isn't part of the issue), then it's truly dead.

 

Most appear to at least turn on but are either not recognized in OS, or simply shuts down shortly after.

[Jae Tee]

Will attempt SeaTools when i can.