A drive badged Hitachi, HGST, IBM or even WD Ultrastar may share the same underlying design. Knowing which generation you have matters, because donor compatibility is the thing that decides whether a mechanical recovery is possible at all.
IBM sold its drive division to Hitachi in 2003; Hitachi became HGST; WD acquired HGST in 2012. The families persisted through all of it, which is what makes donor matching both possible and fussy.
Hitachi acquired IBM’s storage division in 2003, inheriting the Deskstar desktop line and the Ultrastar enterprise one. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies became HGST, and WD bought it in 2012 — which is why current WD Ultrastar drives descend directly from IBM designs. For recovery this genealogy is practical rather than trivia: a mechanical repair needs a donor matching not just capacity but head configuration, firmware family and often manufacturing period, and the same platform may be badged three different ways across those years.
The older Deskstar generation earned an unfortunate nickname for a reliability problem two decades ago. Drives from that era still arrive here, and by now age alone is the dominant factor regardless of what the model was like when new.
Head-stack failure is the commonest mechanical fault, announcing itself as a rhythmic click as the heads fail to find servo data. Because these drives park on a ramp, a clicking Hitachi is more likely to be damaged heads than heads stuck to the platter — which is good news for the platter surface and bad news for continuing to power it.
Service-area faults present as a drive that spins normally but reports the wrong capacity or nothing at all, and are among the more recoverable failures. Modern high-capacity Ultrastars are helium-filled and hermetically sealed, which changes the calculation: a breached seal means the internal environment has already been compromised, and these have to be handled under filtered air with the understanding that a helium drive opened once will not run reliably again — it is imaged in a single planned pass.
Fitting a head-stack requires a donor whose heads match the original in configuration and preamp characteristics, and whose firmware family allows the adaptives to be carried across. Two drives with the same model number and capacity can differ in head count and internal revision depending on when they were built, which is why sourcing is often the slowest part of the job rather than the bench work itself. For older Deskstar units, donors are simply becoming scarce — another reason not to leave an ageing drive powered on in the hope it recovers by itself.
A single Hitachi or HGST drive is from £300 +VAT; where the drive is one member of a NAS, server or RAID set, that work starts from £500 +VAT. Free 48-hour diagnostic and a fixed written quote before anything begins, and most jobs are no fix, no fee — clean-air and donor work carries a 50% deposit with the balance payable only on success.
Effectively yes. Hitachi bought IBM's drive division in 2003, the business was renamed HGST, and WD acquired it in 2012 — so Hitachi, HGST and current WD Ultrastar drives share a direct lineage. It matters for recovery because donor parts must match the platform and firmware family, not just the capacity.
Usually a failed head-stack. These families park their heads on a ramp rather than on the platter, so clicking points to damaged heads rather than heads stuck to the surface. Power it off straight away; every further rotation drags damaged sliders across the recording surface.
Yes, but with a caveat. They are hermetically sealed, so once opened the internal environment cannot be restored and the drive will not run reliably again. That means the work is planned around a single controlled imaging pass rather than repeated attempts.
Because head configuration, preamp characteristics and firmware adaptives all have to align. Two drives sharing a model number and capacity can differ in head count and internal revision depending on when they were manufactured, so sourcing the right donor is often the slowest part of a mechanical recovery.
From £300 plus VAT for a single Hitachi or HGST drive, and from £500 plus VAT where it forms part of a NAS, RAID or server. Fixed in a written quote after a free 48-hour diagnostic, with most jobs handled no fix, no fee.