Treatment ideas for a new WD250 drive that suddenly failed

My problem is with a 35 day old Western Digital 250GB drive that was installed shortly after its purchase with no unusual events. The drive was partitioned into a small 47G partition and a second storing the remainder of the drive. The larger drive partition was used to store all the files that were recoverable from a drive that was on the verge of failing before it was returned for RMA service. I no longer have the drive that was on its last legs, and my recovered data now seems to be lost once again since the new drive is no longer being recognized. My system does have support enabled for drives larger than 137GB and had it enabled before the new drive was installed.

About a week after the recovery operation was completed and the failing drive had already been FedExed away, I was sorting the recovered files when the computer started getting slow and stuttery. The machine was powered down, given a few minutes of rest, and then rebooted.

On power-up, the BIOS was able to identify the drive "Primary Slave: WD25000JB-00FUA0", but also claimed "Primary Slave: Ultra -DMA Mode-2, S.M.A.R.T. Capable but Command Failed" and "Primary Slave failed--hit F1 to continue".

The drive makes no unusual sounds--I hear it spin up normally and at shutdown I hear the heads park, but there is nothing unusual about that. After shutdown, the drive is warm, further suggesting that the plates are spinning. The head-parking click happens at almost exactly the same time as the 120GB Western Digital drive that is the machine's primary drive. I have compared the sounds from the 250GB (failed) and the 120GB (working) drives and aside from the fact that I don't hear "reading" sounds from the 250GB drive, they sound identical to my ear.

Windows fails to recognize that there is a physical device connected. I can go to Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management and I do not see a second physical device present anymore.

I have tried using Western Digital's diagnostics as well.

The for-Windows version of Windows Diagnostics Quick Test WinDLG version 10.0 fails with the message: 11-Cable Test :: Read Sector Error. The detailed test result correctly identifies the drive serial and the Firmware Revision (510.R551). The error code, 0199, is not listed under Western Digital's error code section for the 10.0 diagnostics. I notice that all the listed 4 digit codes are S.M.A.R.T. errors, but they only range from 0001 through 0015.

I then used the for-DOS version of Windows Diagnostics Quick Test WinDLG version 10.0. This utility produced error code 159, which is listed in the diagnostics message and also seems to reports a S.M.A.R.T. failure:

159 SMART Error Self Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART) Error returned during SMART Status/Self Test Command. The drive is defective. Replace.

The last Western Digital test that I tried was the for-Windows version of Windows Diagnostics Quick Test WinDLG version 11.0. When this utility was run, it claimed that it found a drive that has not been setup and asked me if I wanted to begin installing it. Not wanting to risk over-writing any data on the drive, I selected "No". I looked up drive information from the drive and was got this information (note that the size is correct):

Size:
LBA Sectors: 488397168 (250.06GB) CHS 30401 x 255 x 63 (250.06GB)

DMA:
MultiWork DMA Supported : 0,1,2 MultiWord DMA Active: 2
Cycle Time : 120ns Min Cycles / Word : 120ns
Ultra-DMA Support: 0,1,2,3,4,5 S.M.A.R.T. Support: Disabled

Misc:
ATA #'s Supported : 6,5,4,3,2 IORDY Support : Yes
R/W Mult : Yes Sectors/Block : 16
PIO Mode Support : 3,4 PIO Cycle Time : 120ns

Aside from S.M.A.R.T. being disabled, this all sounds correct…

Also, the 11.0 from-Windows diagnostic reports an empty MBR table whereas this drive should have 2 partitions.

OnTrack Easy Recovery does recognize the drive is present and recognizes its full capacity, although it labels the entire size as an "unknown filesystem". Since no head-crash type sounds come from the drive, I felt it was likely safe to experiment with a recovery attempt through this utility. If any region of the disk is selected for recovery analysis, OnTrack just sits at 0% and none of the sounds that I associate with "reading" from a hard drive are heard. I let this run for nearly an hour and never saw the activity bar move once.

Given the young age of the drive and the rapid onset and type of errors, I am hoping that this is an electronics error that can be worked through. This drive was purchased to store files that were restored from another failing drive which was returned for RMA on an extended warranty last week. Since no longer have the four-year old drive that was failing, I am now very motivated to recover files from this 35-day old drive that seems to have failed!!!

Any and all advice that can be offered would be greatly appreciated!

HELLO friend,

Don't mistake me. You will never get replies for this.

See your note may be few lines long. But yours exceeds a page. Do you think that anyone will reply ???????

Try to understanddddddddd

There is nothing wrong with a long detailed post. In fact, it is good that he gives such detail to prevent people from giving advice he's already tried. I haven't helped b/c I can't think of anything to try that he hasn't.

Yeah! I avoided the answer. But I skimmed through your post. No help is needed for your analysis. You can teach yourself.

i think you may have a better luck with this:

get the company's people to replace the electronic board underneath.
cuz i think the board is fried. the hermetic cavity which houses the platters and the head has not been breached. so i think theres a glimmer of hope

Suddenly gather the answers, did it happen to be Kiruthik's favours?

(^^;?(Why karsh there in stead of my wrong post?)

Surely, you'd better be more kind enough to the reader, for example, separate the obsolete data or word from main sentence . Then longness doesn't matter. While you should explain the degree of the importance of data.

In a word, it depends upon the degree of the value of your data.　Because after all these errors you cannot but rely on others.