Hello all,

One of the 500GB SATA drives in my PC has stopped working. I wasn't sure which one, (there are two in the PC) so I took them both out, and tested them on an external USB caddy.

The first one was fine, but the second one is not being recognised by the PC at all. It spins up and there are no "OH MY GOD IT SOUNDS LIKE A WASHING MACHINE FILL OF SPANNERS!" type noises, (in fact it sounds perfectly normal) but it's just not being picked up by the PC.

Any suggestions as to what's worth trying, just to get the data back?

Thanks.

I would suggest downloading a diagnostic tool from drive's manufacturer (e.g Seatools for Seagate drives) . They are usually bootable ISOs and should tell you more about the state of the drive...

I've been testing GeekNerds Windows Data Recovery http://www.datarecoveryuk.co.uk/software/windows/

I'll give them a go when I get home, but the fact that Windows doesn't detect the drives does not bode well...

Sounds like it could be the controller board that gone.

You can swap these but you but you need the exact model & firmware version.

I suspect that you're right, as I did try the software solutions by the way, but nothing worked - Drive not being picked up = hardware issue - but I lost my rag and threw the damned thing away... that'll serve me right for not backing up. OH well, I'm "fairly" sure there wasn't anything that couldn't be replaced but even if there was, I'm not going to give myself a headache thinking about it.