Faulty: 2.5" Seagate 500GB 7200rpm ST9500420ASG

Neosamz,

Ok, that's what I suspected.  I've done this before, but you must find a match for the logic board assembly.  The best place to start would be with a firm that specializes in supplying printed circuit boards for data recovery.  I recommend this company:   http://www.onepcbsolution.com/

I've successfully obtained exact matches before on eBay, but the last board I ordered came out of Canada.  I still think it was shipped from some remote mining camp as it took 9 days to arrive via air mail.  Apparently, the shipper had to wait on the bush pilot to make his mail rounds.  I no sooner recovered my client's data than I received an email from a tech in Arizona who needed the same exact board.  He also successfully recovered his data.  Since then, I found it much easier to use the hard drive PCB specialists to obtain the right board for a specific drive model.  You pay about the same for the board as you would for the entire drive, but it's well worth the cost.

Let us know how you fare.

Tony

Yes.  I have been searching around in Klang Valley, Malaysia but all I can find is ST9500420AS without the 'G'.  I had bought this as well but not able to read my hdd data.  Seagate Support told me that my serial number is OEM from DELL so I have to get support from DELL.  Please help.  Thanks.

Thanks a lot.  I have dropped an email to them.  Hope to get good news from them.

Neosamz,

Good.  Keep us informed.  It helps everyone reading these posts.

Tony

Sure.  Will update here once I got any good news.  Thanks.

Unfortunately, they don't have this particular circuit board available at the moment.  Any other suggestion?

Can Dell check old stock, new or used for my hdd model?  I bought expensive Dell Precision M6400 laptop from Dell and I really hope Dell could help me on this.  I know my warranty is over but I do not mind to pay for the service I need.

Please advise.  Thanks.

Neosamz,

Probably the best alternative would be to contact a local, data recovery firm that can either repair your logic board or disassemble the drive, remove the platters and recover the data in a Class 100 clean room.  I've done a little searching and found this firm in Kuala Lumpur:  http://www.mdr-xp.com/datarecovery.htm

Swapping logic boards can be tricky at best.  For example, if you've had the drive a while and SMART is enabled, then an exact replacement logic board may not be able to retrieve your data due to the way SMART reconfigures your drive on the fly to compensate for bad sectors, etc.

Hope this information helps.

Tony

Thanks.