On Tue, Sep 29, 2020, 8:33 AM H <agents at meddatainc.com> wrote: > I have an old external harddisk, Toshiba 320 Gb, with a USB connector that > I wanted to check for contents. It did not start up when connected and I > could not hear the motor spinning. After leaving it in the freezer > overnight the motor spins but it is not recognized by my computer. I > disassembled it and could see that the head assembly rests outside the disk > but when it is powered on, the head first moves to the center of the disk, > then to the periphery and finally back to the resting position. This > happens every few seconds and leaving it connected overnight changed > nothing. > That repeated seeking suggests it's not passing its self test, and is constantly retrying. It's probably searching for servo data on the disks, and not finding it. >