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HDD suddenly failed to initialize - Can't access it

Doobeedoo

Ok so it's not a boot disk but an additional one for mass storage, worked fine and then next time I went to boot my PC the checking disk for errors started. First time I skipped it cause I know that can take time. Disk loaded that time and everything on it working. Next time when it asked to check errors thing I let it and it seem to stuck for a long time. Restarting PC to try again and it would get stuck on the Windows logo with spinning dots in a loop. Note it's not a boot disk. I restarted again couple of times and there was Windows logo with preparing recovery thing, after a while just a blank screen with a mouse. Restarted again and wen't into BIOS disk was showing there, proper boot order and all. My boot disk is SSD so I hit that it boots from it directly just for safe measure, all the same. Again in BIOS I disabled the SATA port for that HDD then. Windows booted normally. 

Every time I tried to boot with that HDD it couldn't strangely. Just loops trying to initialize it I guess. I took it to external enclosure and same thing. It seems it can't initialize properly. in Device Manager under Disk drives it was showing along other ones. In Disk Manager it didn't at all. In My Computer or This PC it only showed few times when turning on external enclosure and only as disk icon without storage measurement showing. After it I tried on and off few times and every time it was on everything would get frozen, Explorer, Device Manager, other software I tried to recover the disk. Like Seatools it wouldn't show up, if I tried to restart external enclosure to power the disk again. It would just hang at refreshing and Not Responding if I tried anything. 

So the drive was used daily and it worked fine, loads games, writes videos, etc. The disk model is Seagate ST3000dm001 so yeah a 3TB drive. It is mostly full too. While I have some things backed up, it also served as partial backup too. 

My boot drive is an SSD, second disk is a 1TB Seagate one, and this 3TB one was another. The 1TB model I had for longer and works fine. When I turn on external enclosure to power it on, it did produce a tick noise like twice a second for a while then it seemed to power down. To me it seemed the head was trying to read and couldn't, platters continuing to spin. Same on on/off again. So I tried various things I could, from software side it just makes everything freeze and even Disk Management and Explorer if disk tried to initialize, I'd see the filling bar in address bar for a long time just mainly towards end without finishing. So to me it just seems that disked worked fine and one boot it just didn't properly initialize and got stuck there. Had no errors, bad sectors or odd noises before this. 

 

Help :(

| Ryzen 7 7800X3D | AM5 B650 Aorus Elite AX | G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5 32GB 6000MHz C30 | Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 7900 XTX | Samsung 990 PRO 1TB with heatsink | Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 | Seasonic Focus GX-850 | Lian Li Lanccool III | Mousepad: Skypad 3.0 XL / Zowie GTF-X | Mouse: Zowie S1-C | Keyboard: Corsair K63 Cherry MX red | Beyerdynamic MMX 300 (2nd Gen) | Acer XV272U | OS: Windows 11 |

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Probably a bad drive. The st3000m001 drive seemed to have a high failure rate aswell. A bad drive will cause the system to be slow as it has to wait for the drive to finish the task, so a non boot drive will slow down boot.

 

Id just replace the drive with a new one and restore the backups.

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What it's so odd is that it happened so abruptly, working fine and next boot nope. I'd really like to revive it somehow. Maybe even open it to check the heads? 

| Ryzen 7 7800X3D | AM5 B650 Aorus Elite AX | G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5 32GB 6000MHz C30 | Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 7900 XTX | Samsung 990 PRO 1TB with heatsink | Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 | Seasonic Focus GX-850 | Lian Li Lanccool III | Mousepad: Skypad 3.0 XL / Zowie GTF-X | Mouse: Zowie S1-C | Keyboard: Corsair K63 Cherry MX red | Beyerdynamic MMX 300 (2nd Gen) | Acer XV272U | OS: Windows 11 |

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Check this website, it has an extensive list of failing hard drive sounds, if yours sound like any of these you need a replacement on that unit:

Seagate Technology | Official Forums Team

IronWolf Drives for NAS Applications - SkyHawk Drives for Surveillance Applications - BarraCuda Drives for PC & Gaming

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56 minutes ago, seagate_surfer said:

Check this website, it has an extensive list of failing hard drive sounds, if yours sound like any of these you need a replacement on that unit:

Hmm I've tried to identify it but nothing exactly fits. My disk upon booting starts to spin up fast and soon does couple of loader click sounds, like 2-3 a second for a while then it sounds that it powers off. Is it possible that heads stuck or something with it. I take it it's not a good idea to open it myself to try and look.

| Ryzen 7 7800X3D | AM5 B650 Aorus Elite AX | G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5 32GB 6000MHz C30 | Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 7900 XTX | Samsung 990 PRO 1TB with heatsink | Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 | Seasonic Focus GX-850 | Lian Li Lanccool III | Mousepad: Skypad 3.0 XL / Zowie GTF-X | Mouse: Zowie S1-C | Keyboard: Corsair K63 Cherry MX red | Beyerdynamic MMX 300 (2nd Gen) | Acer XV272U | OS: Windows 11 |

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Yeah, I wouldn't open it either. Check to see if you are eligible for RMA through this link:

If data needs to be recovered you can check this other link for our recovery services:

Seagate Technology | Official Forums Team

IronWolf Drives for NAS Applications - SkyHawk Drives for Surveillance Applications - BarraCuda Drives for PC & Gaming

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5 minutes ago, seagate_surfer said:

Yeah, I wouldn't open it either. Check to see if you are eligible for RMA through this link:

If data needs to be recovered you can check this other link for our recovery services:

Yeah warranty expired 2y ago. 

I'm not in US though so I guess I could send it to recovery service for disks where I live.

| Ryzen 7 7800X3D | AM5 B650 Aorus Elite AX | G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5 32GB 6000MHz C30 | Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 7900 XTX | Samsung 990 PRO 1TB with heatsink | Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360 | Seasonic Focus GX-850 | Lian Li Lanccool III | Mousepad: Skypad 3.0 XL / Zowie GTF-X | Mouse: Zowie S1-C | Keyboard: Corsair K63 Cherry MX red | Beyerdynamic MMX 300 (2nd Gen) | Acer XV272U | OS: Windows 11 |

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Yep! When you click on the link, it redirects you to the version of your region's website, it should allow you to verify if the service is also available in your country.

Seagate Technology | Official Forums Team

IronWolf Drives for NAS Applications - SkyHawk Drives for Surveillance Applications - BarraCuda Drives for PC & Gaming

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