Storage Solutions Seagate HDD Crashed. Revival suggestions please. Where to RMA at B'lore?

Gryph0n

Adept
Short Post:

My 5 month old Seagate 2TB HDD has crashed today. Its not even being detected by the BIOS. The damn thing was working fine till it crashed. No prior indications/warnings about any failures in SMART.

It produces 2 sounds in a continous loop:

  1. A short whirring sound. This sounds similar to when the CPU fan or case fan gets in contact with a wire.
  2. A "Beeping" sound.
From Wikipedia, this looks like a "Click-of-death", caused by head or surface issues. From Googling, I've found 2 "home remedies" to revive a HDD.

  1. Put it in the Freezer. Supposedly, this will cool overheated electronics.
  2. Drop it from Half foot onto a soft surface. Supposedly, this can cause stuck heads to move.
I've tried the 1st. No joy. I'm keeping the 2nd option as the last resort. So, wanted to know if there are any other tricks I can try to revive the HDD, without voiding my guarantee?

Can someone also please guide me where I can RMA the HDD in Bangalore? What documents, if any, would be needed for RMA ?

Long Post:

Just feel like venting.

I had my PC download some stuff yesterday night, and crawled into bed while the downloads were still running. Today, early morning, I was woken up by what I had thought to be "beeping" from the PC. Groggy from sleep, I tried to hibernate it, but in the middle of the hibernate, it rebooted. Irritated, I just turned it off and crawled back again.

In the morning, I investigated deeper. Even on power up, the PC was giving the 2 sounds. I initially thought BIOS must have reset or gone bad. But the PC reached the BIOS startup screen after an inordinate delay. Troubleshooting, I disconnected my HDD one by one, oldest to youngest, until when the last HDD was disconnected, and the beeping stopped.

My heart skipped a beat . I wasn't sure which partitions I had on this last & the youngest drive, so I reconnected all the other HDD, and booted up. Luckily, it could have been worse. All 'my precious' was around (Photos, movies, songs). I realized that my partition with all of my installers was gone.

While not 'precious', it was still many years worth of various software I had downloaded & collected (Various flavours of Linux,BSDs, Solaris, Hobby OS's, Open Source Software, SDKs, Drivers). Not precious enough to send for data recovery, but still valuable enough for me to lament its loss.

Having just received a 1TB external HDD as "corporate goodie", I immediately backed up my "precious" :eek:hyeah:. While I've dealt with HDD "growing" bad sectors before, this is the 1st time a HDD has gone total kaput on me. I'm seriously considering RAID on my next rig.
 
I had the same problem, but it still continued to work, at least till i got another HDD to replace it.

http://www.techenclave.com/storage-solutions/seagate-st2000dl003-problem-199335.html

IMO as you have backed up the data, give it for RMA asap. Ensure that you ask them whether you will get a new HDD/recertified one. If its the latter then there might be a problem.

--- Updated Post - Automerged ---

Location

13 BANGALORE
AMATRA INFOTECH PRIVATE
LIMITED
NO:2 & 3 , NEW RAJA BUILDING2ND FLOOR NR
ROADBANGALORE 560002

from : http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/support/warranty/Seacare_Centre_Address_List.pdf
 
Well, haven't actually been able to backup the data; BIOS doesn't even detect the HDD :(

Thanks for the contact info. I'll call them up.

I checked the sound you linked in your post, and mine is the same, except that my beep is preceded by a "whirrr" sound, and it seems to happen regularly, unlike yours which seems to happen intermittently.

By the way, we both have the same HDD model - ST2000DL003. I had bought mine around June 2011, and the sticker on the HDD says "DOM 05/2011". I guess we both got lemons from the same batch.

How long did they take to RMA your drive? Did they give you a new HDD or a refurbished one ?
 
It takes 7-10 days wait to get the HDD replaced...register yourself on the Accel-frontline website..Accel Frontline Services

The office is on the 2nd floor of the raja building...there is a big cycle shop at the ground floor...building is near Townhall.
 
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