7200.4 retries 12 times then stays spinning and busy

[ThomasH]

I have a 7200.4 2.5" seagate that 'clicks' 12 times and then stays spinning but with only the BSY light on.
The 'click' isn't a knocking noise, but just the fast noise of the heads resetting quickly and repeatedly.
Normally, of course, I'd think heads, but I was wondering if anyone had found this out to be firmware related.

PCB=ok

Using the LED: 0000000cc solution, when I short the pins, I can get to the
F3 T>
ASCII Diag mode
but nothing happens after that.

I've tried manually using terminal commands, but basically, you only have the time while the drive is making noise to enter terminal commands. Once it stops clicking, nothing can be entered manually into terminal. You are locked out of entering new commands.

When I try to manually get it to spin down (and it's a race) this is what I get:
Rst 0x10M
ASCII Diag mode

F3 T>/2

F3 2>Z

DiagError 00005014
F3 2>

Trying the same solution with pcb isolation doesn't get anywhere. I opened the drive to inspect, and see no obvious damage on the top surface or filter, but haven't tried headswap yet, since I'm not yet convinced for sure it's heads, not having seen this exact symptom yet on this model.

Do the 7200.4 drives just behave this way when heads are bad, or is this still potentially a fw problem?
Anyone seen this?

[AJ2008]

Did you check PCB is native?

[ThomasH]

According to the customer the PCB is native.
He did just say that it came from a security-locked Lenovo thinkpad that had the BIOS password.
He said that after it failed (blue screen, then invalid OS on reboot attempts), he went in BIOS to disable the password, and that after doing so, it no longer asked for the password on the laptop.

I wonder if the drive is still locked in some way, or maybe even encrypted. I've done a few of those in the past, but can't remember the details, as I think there were a few options on those laptops.

also note:
Shorting the pins on a donor makes the EXACT same noise (12 quick resets) as the client drive whether the client drive is shorted or normal. The difference is that the donor spins down when shorting and shows DRD/DSC, and the client drive stays spinning and BSY

And I just tested a few 7200.3 drives with known bad heads, and they click and then spin down... I didn't have any 7200.4's with known bad heads to see what the norm is for those.

[ThomasH]

Drive has platter damage on inner platter surface. Didn't see it until the heads were out.
I'll still try, but this one is probably shot. Lots of fuss over an obvious problem... probably trying to be too careful.
Damage is on surface1. Surface0 looks ok, which, as acelab had mentioned, might be why it stays busy and spinning, having read copy0 of the SA, (or part), but locking when attempting to access copy1.