Calyps0

So ok, I'm gonna remove the heads first then. Got nothing to lose either way. I doubt condensed air would help though, perhaps I should use something else ?

Sure, professional repair. I would call you more "stubborn" than "curious", but that's OK. My bad , consider the previous "60-100 US $" range as "80-120 US$" instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603%20600003269%20600003316&IsNodeId=1&name=1.5TB a dramatic 20-30% increase that makes the option slightly less convenient . jaclaz Hm, I understand about "professionals" with their thousand dollar equipment and whatever training...but I prefer to try all possible ways first After doing a bit more research I'm fairly certain now that the heads are faulty and need cleaning http://www.soyouwanna.com/clean-head-hard-drive-26646.html

Sure, that means that the head (actually head arm) is not stuck anywhere. Wait, so while it's not stuck - is there anything that can be done to make it read at least without those long intervals? I understand it may seem pointless to try, but I'm still curious... Also it's not 500GB, but 1.5 Tb.

Yep, that is a (incorrectly named) wiping tool, it basicaly attempts writing 00's to each and every sector. But the disk is gone. To explain the delays you get, it goes like that (more or less): You (through the OS, the disk driver and the disk controller and the disk firmware) order the disk to read sector (say) 3289. The disk tries it: Reading sector 3289 .... cannot read it! Trying again reading sector 3289 .... cannot read it! Loop to #2 n times until, by pure chance, it manages to read it, then: OK, sector 3289 read. Additionally, each and every "loud click" you hear is the head completely failing to find a position on the disk and "going astray", a "stuck" head doesn't move (and hence the drive assembly doesn't click loud). Usually stuck heads mean also disk not spinning (as normally a stuck head is stuck to the platter and prevents it from spinning up). jaclaz Alright, but just to clarify - it does spin and I attached the sound it makes most of the time. Is that it? The really loud clicking may happen when running formatting or disk repair tools and only after reaching a certain spot at around 30%. And if you're correct about this, then what exactly is broken there? Is it something that can be replaced? The heads maybe? HDD.mp3

No, that disk is "gone for good" (and this thread is ONLY for BSY and LBA0 related issues). A disk (a working disk, even if "bricked") is either BSY (or LBA0) or it is not. There is NO such thing as "low level format" on any hard disk built in the last -say - 12 years, so I wonder WHAT you have been running. The good news are that attempting the BSY or LBA0 solution detailed here won' t do harm to a disk, it will behave (if it applies/works) as some sort of "reset". Point is that it is a complete waste of time in your case, as it won't solve the issues you described (I mean it won't make, even if the "reset" works, which I doubt would in this case, that drive in any way "more reliable" or reliable at all), and since you don't have data that you may need to retrieve, there is no use for the procedure. To recap: if the issue is caused by the original "log entry error 320+n*256", this procedure allows to "reset the disk" and later upgrade the firmware so that the disk won't be anymore affected by the original "log entry error 320+n*256" issue if the issue is caused by *something else* this procedure may act as "general reset", that in most cases will revive the disk long enough to recover data from it in any case after a successful procedure the disk NEEDS to be tested with Seagate disgnostic tools BOTH the "long" and "short" test and if any of them does not pass successfully the disk has to be RMAed (if within warranty) or used as doorholder/thrown in the dustbin/dismantled to get the magnets and platters for fun, etc, and in NO case used as storage media. You can try the procedure alright, but even if it goes through, I doubt that the Seagate diags will later provide a "pass" result. jaclaz Thanks for explaining...but It's not exactly "gone" yet since I still manage to sort of access it and check for bad clusters, even with delays... I've been using this tool http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool

Hey guys. I've got an ST31500341AS with CC1H firmware and I wanted to confirm here if my problem can be fixed through this solution or not. I see most of the drives here have BSY state error or are non-detectable in BIOS, but mine is somewhere in the middle. It is detected by bios and windows but with very long lags. The disk manager says the drive can't be initialized and gives Cyclic redunancy check error. I've tried low level formatting and it was going well but got stuck at 29% , then the drive disappeard and started giving loud clicking sounds , as if heads are stuck. Checking in HDD regenerator results in endless bad sectors from the beginning, then gets stuck around 7% and becomes undetectable ..also while it's working, I hear this sound like when normal drive is working and heads are reading, but in my case it's like it reads for 1 second and then there's a long pause, then it reads again for 1-2 sec, then again a long pause... However when I ran Victoria from DOS - it said drive is stuck in BSY mode. The data on there isn't important and its already gone, so I'm not worried - all I want to know is if its possible to make it work again? Thanks.