[kemik]

Hi,

I have a Seagate ST31500341AS which has had the famous clicking noise. It came with firmware CC1H which I didn't think was affected by this issue however I get the following problems

Sometimes the PC POST sees the drive sometimes it doesn't. When it does I can boot up the PC and the drive is recognised as a logical drive however windows explorer says the drive need formatting to be used if I drive to access the drive.

I've read lots of stuff regarding these drives but I'm totally confused as to what I should do.

Do I need to try to upgrade the firmware of this drive? If so how and to what firmware as I thought CC1H was meant to be ok?
If not what do I need to do as I desperately need to access the data on the drive


Many thanks

[jaclaz]

There is NO way you can "fix" the actual drive. (NOT a DYI kind of job, unfortunately )

The most you can do, when it happens to actually load "properly" is to make a "forensic like" image of the disk, a suitable app is this one:
http://www.datarescu...cue/v3/drdd.htm

How many disk do you have?
How is the "problematic" disk connected?


You will need also:

• another hard disk with enough space to contain the WHOLE size of the "problematic disk" (i.e. if it is a 500 Gb disk, you need a 640 Gb one to host the 500 Gb sized image)
  
• possibly an USB or firewire adapter to connect the "problematic" disk should direct connection to motherboard prove to create problems.

Once and if, in one pass or in several partial attempts, you will have managed to have the image, you can try using programs like TESTDISK and PHOTOREC:
http://www.cgsecurit...g/wiki/TestDisk
or, actually adviced in this case, DMDE:
http://softdm.com/
to attempt to recover the partition(s) or, should this attempt fail, the actual files.

If you don't succeed in creating the image (due to any reason) your ONLY hope is to find a professional disk/data recovery service, and they aren't cheap .

jaclaz