Old SATA bus HDD not recognized under ANY operating system under ANY conditions

Superuser community,

I have an 1TB SATA bus HDD lying around that I remember worked at some point, but then for unknown reasons stopped working, no matter if I tried to plug it in internally through the motherboard's SATA bus, nor if I tried to connect it via an externally powered USB to SATA interface (see: Renkforce USB 2.0 TO SATA).

Today, a few years later I came back and wanted to get the drive working again, having gained some new experience. I once again analyzed the driver under a live-booted install of ChallengerOS and Windows 11; ChallengerOS does NOT recognize the drive when I connect it through the USB interface (it does not show up under lsusb, but when i switch to another functional drive, that causes it to show up under lsusb), nor does it recognize the drive AT ALL when I try and connect it internally. I have tried this both on the same AND on a different computer to make sure this wasn't isolated to my computer somehow. As expected, Windows does not recognize the disk at all (diskmgmt and diskpart do not show the disk being connected at all but they do show the other, working drive).

A post on another user forum online suggests that this is due to the partition table missing and that I need to consult a HDD repair facility. Is this true or is there a way I can repair this myself (repair = on a Software level; I would not want to mess with the actual components of the drive directly).

Any kind of advice would be appreciated.

Solution 1:

If it's not even showing up as an unknown device when directly connected to a SATA port then I'm afraid it's most likely dead. If the old drive contains files you want to retrieve, your only option at that point is probably a professional recovery service.

I would however first make sure that both the port and the cable used are functional by connecting a second, working drive (preferably one that doesn't contain stuff you don't want to lose, not sure what a partially bad SATA cable does to the file system).

I've not had SATA ports break on me (well... yet), but cables definitely.

Solution 2:

You're throwing far too much effort into this task. A new 1TB drive is about $£€40 these days. If you were paying by the hour how long ago would you have given up? Data recovery is another matter - but for that you are going to be paying by the hour. You won't know without specialist tools whether the unit's motherboard is dead or the physical mechanism. You can't afford the equipment to make that call. 

I will regard this comment from Tetsujin as an answer. I had asked this question to receive advice and potential guidance to restore the functionality of this HDD in the hopes of saving a few bucks, however, in hindsight, this is probably not possible without a lot of time wasted for me.

Thank you to everyone who gave me advice here; I appreciate it a lot.