PC Hard Drive failure - blinking LED? Recovery?

I installed a new HD w/a fresh install of WinXP in my parents’ PC today. When I went to connect their old HD to transfer their settings and data, I found it to be dead. With a molex power connector (verified good w/another HD) plugged in, after turning on the computer, there is no sound of the HD spinning or any sensation of movement/rotation/vibration. BIOS, WinXP Explorer, and Partition Magic 7 all can’t find it. This is with every possible combination of IDE cables and master/slave jumpers - seriously, I just checked. The only sign of life is the small swuare green LED. When the computer is turned on, the LED blinks on 1 second, off 1 sec, repeats that for a total of 10 times, then pauses two seconds and repeats the whole sequence over and over. This sure looks like a borked (technical term) drive to me, but I don’t know what the blinking means, nor can I find anything on the internet.

The drive is a 3-yr-old 3.5". From the label:
40GB AT Quantum Fireball lct 20
Quantum Part Number QML4000LD-A Rev: A00
PN: JP-012341-12541-0CE-12A0
CT: 239750055L9KYE
P/N: 204533-001

Let’s forget the blinking LED mystery for a second and get to the 2nd part of the question, recovery. Whatever the problem with the HD mechanism or circuitry, I believe the magnetic platters are still intact and mostly, if not wholly, undamaged. I’m sure trained professionals recover data in situations like these all the time. Does anyone have any idea what this would cost? And are places like this or this a good choice?

Brain-dead question: have you tried it on another power connector? On another PSU? Just because you’ve verified the molex doesn’t mean that it’s making good contact with this HDD. Further, the new HDD may require less power than the old one and it’s just possible that the current from the PSU is marginal. Does the HDD still work in the old machine? These are unlikely but easy to check and well worth checking.

Although a dead HD is possible, it’s not likely, unless you’re hiding something from us. I suspect that you’ve hooked up the drives incorrectly.

I have to make some assumptions here:
[ol]
[li]The drives are IDE[/li][li]You’re putting them both into the computer at once.[/li][/ol]

If so, you may have exceeded the power supply, or you mah have put the drives on the same cable incorrectly, or you may have a bad IDE connector on the motherboard.

Here’s how to tell and what to do:
[ol]
[li]I’d first check the power supply by putting only the new HD in. Use the BIOS setup utility to see if the HD spins up and is auto-detected. If so, put both drives in and try again. If you can’t detect both drives at once, it may be the PS. Anything below about 300 W is suspect.[/li][li]If you’re putting both drives on the same IDE cable, you have to ensure that one is set to be master and one is set to be slave. This is set with jumpers on the back of the drive near the power connector. Trust me: if you screw this up you’ll have weirdness! I just did this with my computer; it took a couple of hours for the elevator to get to the top floor, brain-wise![/li][li]If you’re putting the drives on separate cables, one of the IDE connectors on your motherboard may be bad. First check the BIOS to see if one is disabled, then swap the drives between connectors.[/li][/ol]

I’ll hazard a guess: you put both IDE drives on the same cable but didn’t set them up as master-slave.

Joe

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough the first time, but here we go:

I have tried the dead HD on every power connector on two different PCs with 2 different power supplies. The new HD is a 7200 rpm 160GB, so I doubt it requires less power than the 3yr-old 40gb 5200 rpm. Anyway, I’m having no power issues. The HD doesn’t work anywhere.

Assumption 1 is correct, #2 is incorrect.

Please try reading my OP again and see if you can give me any help.
Can anyone address the issues of the blinking LED or HD recovery businesses? Those are my questions.

Couldn’t find anything about the blink pattern, but according to Maxtor’s website (Maxtor now owns Quantum’s hard drive business now and does the support for them), if the platters don’t spin, they refer you to the Warranty center (ie, dead drive :slight_smile: ). Which the OP has already determined.

However, I did have one clarification - you said you tried every Master/Slave jumper combination - does that statement also include Cable Select? Most systems sold in the past several years require that both drives on an IDE channel be jumpered for Cable Select, and the first drive on the the cable (farthest away from the motherboard) is usually the primary, at least for those drives using the 80-pin IDE cables.

I am going to assume that this was tried as well. If the drive is truly dead, there really isn’t much you can do. Yes, you can use data recovery services such as the ones you mentioned - however, their prices are usually so exhorbitant (with good reason - if they’re opening up damaged hard drives, it needs to be in a clean room and requires some specialized equipment, especially if their services don’t violate hard drive manufacturers’ warranties - ontrack used to have this certification, but I don’t remember if they do anymore or not) that it is usually not worth it for anything but really, really rich people and businesses that have critical data.

For instance these guys (cddataguys.com), claim they have some of the lowest data recovery prices anywhere. For your 40GB drive, it would cost $1049! (Somehow, I think it might be slightly different now, as their price list doesn’t go over 50GB, implying that it hasn’t been updated recently - but that should give you an idea of the costs involved). I remember a time when I was given a price of $100 per MB! (yes, Megabyte :eek: )!

Basically, if the hardware is damaged, for most consumers they just might as well throw the drive away and hope they backed their important data off-drive somewhere.

One thing you might try, since you’ve really got nothing else to lose, is to stick the drive in the freezer for a bit. I have seen reports of that trick working on recalcitrant drives, but I’ve never done it myself, can’t vouch for the validity, disavow any knowledge of any damage that might result to the computer itself, etc, etc. Use at your own risk, YMMV, yadda, yadda, yadda.

One other solution comes to mind - and again, all usual disclaimers - don’t try this at home, this will void any warranty that might exist, could damage anything and trigger Ragnarok in the process, etc. - apply. My brother and I had a similar situation. We had a WD drive that was dead as a doornail, but we were pretty sure it was just a problem with the drive circuitry rather than a physical issue with the drive/platters themselves. We were able to acquire a hard drive of the exact same model off of ebay, and swapped the circuit boards. The formerly dead hard drive was recognized immediately. We rescued the data off of the drive, then formatted it and it has been functioning normally ever since, but we don’t use it for anything we might want to conceivably keep.

Hope this info helps

Jake4-

I do quite a bit of data recovery in my job. I am located in Houston, but would be happy to talk to you over the phone/help you out if you want. I would charge you nothing to talk, so this is not an attempt to solicit business or the like. I just enjoy helping.

Let me know and I’ll get you my #.

PS - Don’t stick the drive in the freezer.

The drive’s not going in the freezer.

critter42, thanks for the info on the prices (holy crap), even if they are out of date. I’m getting some updated info.

I’ve heard of the whole “replacing the circuit board with the exact same model” idea before, but don’t know if I’ve got it in me. Does anyone know of any online instructions? And what does the procedure entail?