Please help. Problem with Hard Drive. 3tb HDD is detected as 4.1gb by the BIOS.

[Audiophile]

Hard drive is 3tb Seagate sv35. It spins, heads move twice, stops spinning. It happened suddenly while my computer was on. it didn't fall. nothing happened that could physically damage the drive. it is detected by the BIOS as 4.1 gb drive. When I connect it back to PC windows starts to hang. task manager shows 100% utilization of other drives that I have on my system. Tried to change cables. sata ports, cleaning contacts on pcb of the hard drive.didn't help. Anyone knows what could be the reason ? Any help will be appreciated. Of course something that I could do at home.

That's not my video, but my drive does exactly the same thing.

 

[Guest]

Firmware failure?

Literally nothing else is ringing the bell here, if the case above turns out to be true mate, you could throw it in the trash as only partial recovery of data will be possible, but that's the worst case scenario... Still investigating as it easily could be smth else that's fixable, will see mate.

[Kirky2k15]

Needs to be formatted to GPT

[Guest]

Yeah mate, have fun...

 

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/200-ways-to-revive-a-hard-drive/

[I am an SSD]

Just now, MarthiniL said:

Yeah mate, have fun...

 

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/200-ways-to-revive-a-hard-drive/

Wow thats an awful lot of stuff to do...

[Audiophile]

Thank you for your replies guys. Won't putting the whole drive damage the platters in it ? I am afraid condensation can damage the data. For now I detached PCB and will freeze only it. if it doesn't help I will try to freeze the whole drive as a last chance.

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, Kirky2k15 said:

Needs to be formatted to GPT

Before our friend goes to put his damn drive in the fridge, are you sure this is the answer?

[Guest]

Since Windows hangs when you plug in the drive, burn a Linux Live CD distro onto something portable, boot from it, and see if it reads your drive and try to recover some stuff if you can... Also, try reseting your CMOS, unplugging and plugging back your mobo battery and as a last resort try slamming it a little bit, if the drive is detected but isn't readable in the linux distro, could be an MBR problem so trying to partition it to GPT or trying to replace the MBR might help

[Guest]

Also, don't put the drive in the freezer as this most likely will destroy your drive but will give you some legroom to recover some of the important data before it heats up again.

[Kirky2k15]

6 minutes ago, MarthiniL said:

Before our friend goes to put his damn drive in the fridge, are you sure this is the answer?

Not 100% but IIRC drives higher than 2TB need to be formatted to GPT to be recognised to their full capacity in windows?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Kirky2k15 said:

Not 100% but IIRC drives higher than 2TB need to be formatted to GPT to be recognised to their full capacity in windows?

Yeah, but I see absolutely no reason why his drive would be recognised as 4.1 GIGABYTES other than corruption, but trying your method could help

[Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Kirky2k15 said:

Not 100% but IIRC drives higher than 2TB need to be formatted to GPT to be recognised to their full capacity in windows?

I have been using this drive for while now. It was detected as a 3tb. It failed while it was working. Windows freezes when I connect it to PC. Other live recovery tools simply detect inoperable drive.

[Kirky2k15]

Just now, Audiophile said:

I have been using this drive for while now. It was detected as a 3tb. It failed while it was working. Windows freezes when I connect it to PC. Other live recovery tools simply detect inoperable drive.

Ah, RMA then. Is it under warranty?

[Audiophile]

1 minute ago, Kirky2k15 said:

Ah, RMA then. Is it under warranty?

It had 1 year of warranty. But it has been 3 years since I bought this drive. 

[Audiophile]

So I tried freezing the PCB first. It didn't help. Froze a whole drive. didn't help either. 

I decided to keep the drive in case I get a new PCB or a drive like this to replace parts or experiment to see if I can recover the data.