Member Avatar for Bandera_Bulldog

So, this description may be a long one...

First, the HDD info:
Brand: Seagate
Model: ST2000DM001
Controller Board: 100664987 Rev A
Capacity: 2TB

A family member (who is an author) recently had their HDD fail with many chapters of their book stored within the drive. Since I'm a EE, they figured that I should be able to fix it. I made no promises, but took a look at the drive. Here is what I have seen so far.

In Disk Manager, the disk shows up without any space that can be allocated or any volumes. Thus I am unable to assign drive letters and the like. As the subject mentions, when I look at it in the DiskPart utility it only shows up as 6656 Bytes without any partitions. I've used a hex reader to open the disk and it shows the MBR only with a total sector space of 13. Based on the research that I've done and having little to no knowledge about Hard Drives my only guess is that something is wrong with the controller board and the ROM needs to be transferred to a donor board. The HDD does not make any "clicking" sounds and seems to spin up fine. One last detail, I've used Seagates tools and found that it passes some of its SMART tests, but fails some others. I'm not quite sure which ones specifically.

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.

-Eric

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Short, practical note to sit above the thread:

The 6,656‑byte / “13 sectors” symptom means the drive is reporting an extremely small LBA window — that usually points to a firmware/service‑area issue or an ATA capacity limit (HPA/DCO), not a simple file‑system problem. Do not delete partitions or format the disk yet; the highest‑value step is to make a sector‑by‑sector image first so further tests are non‑destructive. (gnu.org)

Boot a Linux live USB (or attach the drive to a spare internal SATA port) and collect raw device info before changing anything. Useful commands (replace /dev/sdX): 

sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdX
sudo hdparm -N /dev/sdX
sudo hdparm --dco-identify /dev/sdX
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdX
sudo sg_readcap -l /dev/sdX

hdparm -N reveals HPA (current vs native maximum); --dco-identify shows DCO state; smartctl exposes SMART attributes to watch (Reallocated, Pending, Offline_Uncorrectable); sg_readcap verifies reported capacity. Run these on a direct SATA connection (many cheap USB bridges hide/pass-through ATA features inconsistently). (manpages.debian.org)

If you can’t image, stop and consider a lab. If imaging succeeds, you can experiment on the image or, carefully and only after imaging, temporarily restore HPA to the device’s native max to see whether partitions reappear — but avoid --dco-restore or permanent writes until you understand the state (hdparm warns these operations can be destructive). Also, DIY PCB swaps often fail unless adaptive/ROM data are correctly transferred; donor‑board attempts can make recovery harder. (manpages.debian.org)

Practical priorities: 1) image with ddrescue to an external disk or image file, 2) collect hdparm/smartctl/sg_readcap output, 3) only then try non‑destructive tests on the device or image. If SMART shows extensive reallocated/pending sectors or ddrescue can’t read, stop and use a professional service (Seagate Rescue or a reputable lab) — the family’s manuscript is worth preserving. (gnu.org)

Notes: this complements // — BIOS or formatting checks are low‑risk only after a verified image exists; imaging is the priority.

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Member Avatar for rch1231

Hello,

One suggestion would be to go into the Computer BIOS setup and see if you can manually set the drive specs (heads, cyl, sectors) instead of using the AUTO settings. How old is the mother board you are trying to connect it to? If it is too old it may not know how to deal with a 2 TB drive an you could try another computer and see what you get.

If it comes up and starts to see the drive correctly use a drive recovery program if you havve one. If not then I would download testdisk and photorec which are programs written by the air force to recover hard drive partitions and data.

Hope that helps.

Member Avatar for Danuja

Select your Hard drive in BIOS and dissable SMART. See whether your problem is solved. If not, delete all of your partitions and recreate them using a windows 8 disk..

Member Avatar for svsathyavishnu

I think it is better to format entire drive. .
In Linux you have to go to "Disk utility" or "Disk management" select the drive and select option format drive annd recreate partitions I dont know how to format drive in windows. .

commented: Formatting the drive will destroy data the poster is attempting to recover. +0
commented: Your 'In Linux' is too generic. Your method wouldn't work on most distros. OP also said they want to recover data; formatting wipes it all. -1
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