Seagate offer an extensive range of desktop and enterprise hard disk drives (HDD), from Barracuda to Exos, which vary greatly in terms of price. However, it is the firmware and the type of recording used by the drive along with how much has been asked of the drive during its operation that determines the different routes that can be taken when recovering data from a failed Seagate hard drive.
Many failures of hard disks manufactured by Seagate are due to service area errors as opposed to head crashes. A typical failure of this nature would involve the drive spinning normally however reporting incorrect capacity or alternatively simply stating that the model number could not be found. These types of failures are generally considered to be some of the easier to recover compared to many other forms of failure.
Seagate drives store their operating firmware within a “reserved service area” located on the platter; this reserved space is organised into modules. When one of these modules can no longer be read (due to wear & tear, improper shutdown, or inconsistencies with the translator) the drive will be unable to complete its startup process. As such you have a drive which is spinning properly, looks good and even sounds like it is functioning normally, yet provides absolutely nothing usable (ie: zero capacity, no model string, or incorrectly displays a size).
In this case the important thing is the user data has been left unchanged. Recovery involves fixing/replacing those modules by way of the drive’s built-in diagnostic port as many times as required until they properly enumerate; at that time image the disk read-only prior to attempting to access or modify it in any other manner. There is an element of precision involved, however there is likely little to be concerned about.
Some Barracuda and Expansion units make use of shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology. SMR uses overlapping tracks similar to how tiles on a roof fit together to improve capacity. Once written, data will initially reside within a traditional cache area until it can be “folded” into the subsequent shingle region. This means that the unit is often working with your data well beyond when you have stopped writing to it.
For recovery, this will have two results. It may make performance under load appear to be a dead hard drive even though it isn’t; therefore if you run into an issue when running a large file copy on your SMR drive (which could stall) it doesn’t necessarily mean your hard drive is about to die. Once a drive begins to fail, an interrupted background fold can cause inconsistency of data being stored within the cache and the shingled section; this alone is another reason not to leave a failing drive powered up hoping it will settle.
Of the three products (Barracuda desktop hard drives, IronWolf NAS hard drives, and Exos enterprise hard drives), Barracuda comes with all types of failures (firmware, heads, boards). The majority of the time we receive IronWolf products as part of an array as opposed to receiving each individually, and bay order matters more than the individual drive. We often receive Exos products as a result of a failed server/RAID set and need to recover the entire array, which just happens to include Seagate disks. Expansion and Backup Plus external drives contain an internal drive(s) connected via a bridge. Therefore please send the entire unit to us, because the bridge fails at least as often as the disk.
A standalone Seagate drive whether internal or external is priced from £300 +VAT. In instances where the Seagate drive is integrated into a NAS (network attached storage), server or RAID (redundant array of independent disks) set, the starting price will be from £500 +VAT. Each project commences by way of a free 48-hour diagnostic to identify any issues related to the recovery of data and then, as appropriate, a fully detailed fixed price written quotation will be supplied. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data; however, the cost associated with all forms of donor-part work requires a 50% advance payment, the remainder being payable only on successful completion of the data recovery.
This is usually a firmware failure instead of a mechanical failure. Seagate drives typically obtain their operational firmware from modules located within a reserved service area. If one module loses readability then the drive will not be able to complete its boot process; as such, it will spin normally, but report “no capacity” or “blank model.” Generally speaking, the user data on the drive will remain intact and therefore there is a good opportunity for successful data recovery.
This is a common symptom for a faulty service area. The drive translator or capacity modules are either damaged or inconsistent, which causes the drive to fail to report its correct configuration. Stop power cycling this unit (each time you power cycle it is one more opportunity to damage/overwrite what is left of your modules) and have the service area properly fixed/repaired.
Yes they can. Shingled drives write to cache memory and use the overlapped tracks for storage; therefore, a drive that fails during the reorganisation process may have data written inconsistently to both cache memory and the overlapped tracks. In addition, due to this behaviour, a drive that appears to be stalled while attempting to write large amounts of data does not necessarily mean the drive failed.
Yes. Usually IronWolf drives are sent to us as members of an NAS array and Exos are usually part of a server or RAID set; therefore, the work involved is generally reconstructing an array (as opposed to working on individual drives) and costs from £500 + VAT to do. Send every member, labelled in bay order.
Single internal or external Seagate drive from £300 + VAT; part of a RAID / NAS / server from £500 + VAT. Costs will be fixed within a written quotation after a complimentary 48-hour diagnostic period has been completed. In most cases you only pay if we recover your data.