SEAGATE BARRACUDA 1TB HDD model ST1000DM003 suddenly died without warning

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Suddenly with no previous warning, my Win 8.1 desktop computer started to boot and gave the warning that my drive was in danger of imminent failure. Then, when it booted, the drive, my second internal HDD (D:/), had disappeared. This drive is only a couple years old and there had been no warning. I had run chkdsk and defragged in the past, with no problems.

Now, the drive does not power up at all. It does not appear on my Win 8.1 computer even under ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS | DISK MANAGEMENT. I put it in my external Aluratek HDD Docking Enclosure and tried it on my laptop, and it does not respond at all to power up (I tried other drives, and they power up).

The drive is only 2 years old. Why might it have failed so distinctly? Because there were no behavior problems or warnings of any kind, and it is now a complete “off”/no powerup situation, I wonder if there might be some kind of “fix” (like, god help me, an internal fuse or something).

This is a major setback for me, and I’m not in a position where I can afford a recovery job.

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Electronic and mechanical devices always fail, you were just unlucky to see the failure early in the expected life of a hard disk. The only recovery option is from backup, but I suspect you don’t have one from the tone of your post.

cheers, Paul

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Besides taking the drive to a forensic expert and paying an arm and a leg for recovery, the best advice we can
give you here is; ensure that you have more than one backup of your data in the future.

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Maybe take both harddrives to a known-good, expensive [no discount store], computer repair shop. They might be able to stick each drive into a known-good tech computer and see what can be done. It will not be cheap, they might be able to bring back the drive with data long enough to make a backup onto an external source [this won’t be cheap either]. Bring your credit or debit card, keep all receipts.
If you end up buying replacement harddrives, consider getting the extended warranty since you make monies off of your stuff. And, pay for and use two high-quality external devices [1TB+], high-quality backup/restore software. Why two devices? Well, at home here, I backup each computer onto each external device, having multible backups makes me feel safer.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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…I wonder if there might be some kind of “fix”…

I have seen a few cases (about five from memory) when HDDs failed to spin up when powered on.

A couple of times it was a matter of holding the HDD in one hand then slapping it on each side a couple of times with the palm of my other hand.

Another couple of times I used a trick I found on one of the Internet HDD forums. Wrap a couple of layers of paper towel around the drive (to absorb any moisture) then place the HDD in a freezer bag, suck out as much air as you can, then seal the bag (I then sealed the bag w/ the HDD in a 2nd bag). Place the bag/hdd on the lowest (coldest) shelf of your fridge for about eight-to-ten hours (don’t put it in your freezer – that is too cold).

Get everything ready to connect the bad HDD to your PC and boot as soon as possible after taking the HDD out of the fridge (PC powered off but SATA & power connections ready to connect, USB HDD connected and powered on, etc.). Remove the HDD from the fridge/bags, connect to the PC and power-on as quickly as possible. If the HDD spins up you stand a fair chance of recovering files; if it doesn’t spin up then a data-recovery service is probably your only option.

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I’ve used the “tap with the handle of a screwdriver” method to spin up drives, but you only get a couple of goes before the drive is defunct.

cheers, Paul

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Suddenly with no previous warning, my Win 8.1 desktop computer started to boot and gave the warning that my drive was in danger of imminent failure. Then, when it booted, the drive, my second internal HDD (D:/), had disappeared. This drive is only a couple years old and there had been no warning. I had run chkdsk and defragged in the past, with no problems.

Now, the drive does not power up at all. It does not appear on my Win 8.1 computer even under ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS | DISK MANAGEMENT. I put it in my external Aluratek HDD Docking Enclosure and tried it on my laptop, and it does not respond at all to power up (I tried other drives, and they power up).

The drive is only 2 years old. Why might it have failed so distinctly? Because there were no behavior problems or warnings of any kind, and it is now a complete “off”/no powerup situation, I wonder if there might be some kind of “fix” (like, god help me, an internal fuse or something).

This is a major setback for me, and I’m not in a position where I can afford a recovery job.

Fortunately for me, before it actually died, I took it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy to replace it. They were able to clone the seagate to the Western Digital. I paid $149.00 for all the labor and 59.99+tax for the hard drive 12/7/2015. The Seagate is factory installed on my Dell Inspirion 3647 i5.

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My girlfriend has had 2- SEAGATE BARRACUDA 1TB HDD model ST1000DM003 Drives fail in the last 3 years. Lucky for her I back up her computer for her.
For some reason those particular HDD’s have a high failure rate.

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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My girlfriend has had 2- SEAGATE BARRACUDA 1TB HDD model ST1000DM003 Drives fail in the last 3 years. Lucky for her I back up her computer for her.
For some reason those particular HDD’s have a high failure rate.

I have worked on many customers’ Seagate HDDs > 500GB that appeared to be failing (SMART errors, etc.). About nine cases in ten upgrading the firmware on those drives fixed the problem.

To upgrade a Seagate HDD’s firmware go to Seagate’s Support/Downloads website and search for the HDD’s Serial Number, then follow the instructions provided.

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My girlfriend has had 2- SEAGATE BARRACUDA 1TB HDD model ST1000DM003 Drives fail in the last 3 years. Lucky for her I back up her computer for her.
For some reason those particular HDD’s have a high failure rate.

I just recently also had the exact same make and MN drive die; 2013 DOM and about 18,000 hours on it.
It was covered here in another post, but essentially the last thing I tried was a full format, and it failed somewhere over 75% done. It simply said the drive could not be formatted.
Then it would not even show up in the bios or Computer.
I notice these drives are a way thinner (about 19 mm) than 1 TB drives used to be, about the same as 250 and 320 GB drives used to be. To me means they likely have fewer platters and/or much tighter tolerance flying heads etc.
Likely a cheaper design to produce, but just possibly less reliable?
Anyway, I would not buy another.
2 years is just way too soon to have a complete drive failure on something rated for like 1.2 million hours MTBF, IMO.
if the drive manufacturers want to push us quickly into SSD drives this is a good way to do it. (Hey, wait a minute….?)

rstew

PS: I just checked the Seagate site and there is no newer firmware version available, at least for my SN drive.

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Do they? You have the figures? (A sample size of one does not a study make.)

cheers, Paul

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Do they? You have the figures? (A sample size of one does not a study make.)

cheers, Paul

Personal experience is the only sample size I need for now Paul.:D

Don't take yourself so seriously, no one else does
All W10 Pro at 22H2,(2 Desktops, 1 Laptop).

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That’s why I buy these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA67S2154777

5 Year Warranty

:cheers:

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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It’s possible that the circuit board attached to the drive is what is bad. If you have an identical drive (same brand and model number), you could swap the circuit boards to see if that revives the drive.

Here is a recent discussion about that very topic.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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MTBF guarantees that some drives will fail early, you may have been unlucky, but it’s your money…

cheers, Paul

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MTBF guarantees that some drives will fail early, you may have been unlucky, but it’s your money…

cheers, Paul

Exactly Paul! :rolleyes:

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