I take it that if a drive is not detected with the sudo testdisk command that it is not recoverable using Ubuntu Rescue Remix, or am I wrong? I have a Barracuda drive that spins and makes the normal nice soft clicking sound when powering up, but is not detected in Windows or Ubuntu, not with the Ubuntu Rescue Remix disc running sudo testdisk command. I’ve mounted the drive into a desktop, and it wouldn’t boot. I’ve also tried it in a docking station, and two other usb to sata adapters, one is usb2 and the other is usb3. I also tried swapping circuit boards with another identical drive, but it was still not detected. When I swapped the circuit boards back, I had to reformat the good drive, and it still works fine, but in no case do I get detection of the bad drive. Is there anything else I can try?

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.

If it is a mechanical problem like a stuck or crashed head then not probably not. If you really really want the data there are recovery services but they are expensive.

You can find where people have opened the drive to free stuck heads or put it in the freezer for heat problems but I would not recommend it.

If the drive is not detected by the operating system, it is not detected by the system BIOS. This is not due to mechanical failure, but to failure in the integrated drive electronics (IDE). YES, SATA are actually also IDE drives, because of what IDE actually means. Drive electronics contain the drive firmware, which is a small computer program that operates the drive. This firmware changes frequently, because the manufacturing process necessitates it.

If you can find identical drives manufactured within one week of each other, there's a good chance the firmware version is identical, and you can swap the boards.

This is incorrect information. A Seagate ROM on the PCB is unique to the specific serial number of the drive.

What is the full model of the drive? It is, at the very least, an underlying firmware issue and possibly a bigger issue of heads and media if it is a newer DM series drive.

what commands have you tried to detect the drive?
i would try:
and maybe more.

with dmesg:
have a look at the output of dmesg, remember the last timestamp.
plug in the drive.
wait a minute.
take another look at the output of dmesg - any new entries after the lastone?

Hello, Thanks for the various suggestions. My apologies for the delay - I just had a shoulder surgery and was in hospital for a few days.

AwesomeMachine: I bought two identical drives at the same store at the same time. Unfortunately, the defective drive is 100687658 REV C, while the good drive is 100717520 REV B. With most boards you would have to also desolder the small bios chip from the defective drive's pcb and move it over to the donor, but I have heard that with the Barracuda drives, that always isn't necessary, if, as you say, you can find a donor of the same lot. I believe such professional data recovery equipment, such as from Ace Labs and SalvationData can actually wipe the bios and re-calibrate the drive... not 100% sure on that though.

michaelk: Could it still be stuck heads if the drive spins up normally? I've heard of people carefully opening the case in a dust-free environment and with a latex surgical glove using their fingers to gently wiggle the heads free. Would you suggest trying that? Another thing I tried with the Ubuntu Rescue Remix was to connect the other identical drive, that is still in it's original usb external casing, and it showed up, and gave an identification of itself. I then disconnected it, clicked back one step, connected the bad drive with an IDE/SATA USB2 adapter, clicked enter, and it showed also 3TB but with a different identification. I tried the option to repair MBR and got simply write error.

LukeRFI: The model is the notorious Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001, which was released as an internal, as well as packaged as an external drive in a Seagate Backup Plus casing.

ondoho: I only tried sudo checkdisk and sudo fdisk -l. I'll give the other two a try in a few days when I can make a little better use of my right arm. Thanks much, everyone!

That being said, the odds of you getting the data off yourself is very low. They almost always have at least one weak and/or crashing head as well as being riddled with firmware issues. The more you power it on, the higher the odds of a complete fatal head crash. There is a very small window between failing and dead with this model of drive.

Even now, there are limited data recovery professionals who are fully able to handle these drives. Many misdiagnose firmware issues as dead heads, while others just cannot even handle the firmware issues.

Open question: is there a way to generate a file list in such a case, without actually repairing the drive or recovering the data, such as with the ls > print.txt command? If I knew exactly what I lost, I could recover it by other means.

You generally need to be able to access the sectors on the drive in order to generate a file listing.