Data Recovery On A Dropped 3TB Seagate Hard Drive
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.ย. 2024
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This is an actual data recovery case on a 3TB Seagate hard drive that was dropped. It did not end up with a seized spindle, like most of them do, instead the heads slammed into the platters and were completely wrecked. Hard drive repair is challenging enough, but this drive was being extra difficult to work with.
I hope I never have to use your services, but you're probably the first company I'll call if it comes to that. Great video, and great job!
Thanks for watching!
It is always a privilege to watch a master at work, regardless of the profession.
This is why I would send my drive to Seagate themselves. They can take the platters and load them onto a machine designed to recover data. Good job saving this client’s data. I have a drive which was subjected to shock, and thankfully it’s under the Seagate recovery plan. There’s 13TBs of data I need recovered.
I have swapped controller boards on a 250 GB SATA Maxtor that had something metal fall on it while powered up and exploded the controller board, and it did work (with a bit of strange behavior). It was from the same model, but completely different serial number, and manufactured like a year later, and the donor drive had mechanical faults and would not calibrate. When I powered it up the first time, it made some strange noises and took a few attempts to calibrate, but did start working and has continued to work fine since. And that was about 5 years ago (though I don't use it often anymore). The only strange behavior was that I had one particular computer where it would cause the BIOS to hang while detecting the drive if connected while booting, but hotplugging it worked fine.
There was nothing critical on this drive, so it wasn't worth paying to have it recovered, it just saved time and I wanted to have a working drive.
The moral of the story is, despite what he said, if your data is not critical and you aren't going to send it to be recovered, I'd say it is worth it to try a board swap, if you happen to have one available.
Nice Recovery......I had 2 drives crashed on me on a raid 5 and I didn't have a backup. I lost my data. I learned my lesson, Now I save all my data on my Google Drive ...and now I never have to worrying about a drive failing and losing my data. Cloud Storage is the answer.
Thanks for the video. I've had my share of hard drives I had to recover for clients. Nothing as professional as replacing the heads but I know what a pain it can be to have a barely holding on for dear life drive and recovering sectors, skipping sectors to try to get it to read in a different way.
Just great job on this video. I always told my customers to spend the cash and have it done professionally. It's worth it and leaps and bounds better chance for successful recovery then just me possibly doing further damage by pushing it further and further into unrecoverable state.
@ACS Data Recovery,
Hey guys, in the future before you attempt a head swap double check that the "Pre-Amps" are the same/very similar.
To do that connect to Seagate drive through Serial TTL (this one is 1.8V beware to get logic converter! There is schematic for Kindle on the web). Then once in connected to the drive click "ctrl+Z" to get into service mode. Then click "ctrl+l" (its l and not i) to get HDD info, which will show the "Pre-amp" model.
Then just compare numbers between patient and donor drives.
But in this case I guess you didn't want to power it up at all to avoid further damage. You could cover the motor contacts to prevent the drive from spinning - then it shouldn't try to move the heads.
Great job anyway!
That is something we've been doing for a while now, but we weren't doing it when this video was produced. You are right, it is an excellent way to avoid head compatibility issues. Thanks for the awesome contribution!!
I could just listen. Work of a professional. Like music to my ears.
And this, people, is why you have multiple backups of your important files. I have three different backups and the most important stuff is stored in a paid cloud service. It's cheaper to have 3 or 4 external drives than to have a drive recovered - by a LONG shot! I bet this Scott guy ended up paying in the thousands of dollars for this service.
:/ If you have bad internet, it will take years to back it up.
Windows updates disallow not rebooting your computer every single day.
If it is some small file that is really important, you can obviously back it up using a free service.
But large files are impossible to upload.
Maybe, if you compress them.
But uploading a lot(like 10gb) is going to take weeks.
I bet you he doesn't like your comment
Mans gotta make money
Cloud services can disappear overnight or glitch out you know.
Welp. 50.000 photos on an external seagate drive. That's a disaster waiting to happen
1 photo on a seagate drive is a disaster waiting to happen :)
i see, you like seagate? ;)
They've caused me a lot of sleepless nights crying. And no, I'm not a girl ;)
toysareforboys Ohhh I remember you from the fan acoustic test lol
External 3.5" drives are designed to be stationary and I'd never trust a single external drive as a primary storage medium. They are great for running your backups to and for temporary storage of large files and directories, but never for primary storage.
the guy recovering: * heavy sweating *
Almost midnight in the mid of a work week, and I watched close to 40min video on HDD data recovery :)
I believe I have the same exact issue. my drive just fell Thur. I'm devastated because my computer crashed and they retrieved and backed up everything on this drive. 2 days after receiving my computer back I had this happen. definitely learned my lesson. Everyone please please backup on multiple sources....about how much does this run? a company in my area has already said to only give it to someone with a clean room.
Depends on the size of the drive, but it can range from $900 up to $1,500+ depending on the extent of the damage.
another tech of yours quotes 1600-1700
That's why I put $900 to $1,500+. It depends on the size of the drive, what exactly happened and the extent of the damage. When a drive drops, it can have a wide range of issues, from just a damaged set of heads, to the heads seized to the platters, to the entire spindle being seized.
+ACS Data Recovery gotcha! I was just tryna get an idea for my gofundme. thanks
Wow, Eve, I feel very bad for you! I hope the second recovery attempt doesn't kill you!
Backing up on multiple... well, not sources, but targets; yeah.
Nice to see it was someone willing to recover their family photos and memories, and not some scumbag's plot to destroy the world. Great job.
great video! I should send this to all my clients who think I can snap my fingers and magically make their dead drives work
you are just a noob who doesnt even know what hes doing. thats why reliable professionals like Ontrack exist lol
I like how measured his movements are. i love looking at this
60k photos on a Seagate dude rolled the dice for sure
lol
3 am . Los Angeles.. simply a good expending time viewing this video. thanks
Thanks for sharing - you have amazing patience!
Thank you.
YA ITS WAS AMAZING TO MATCH THo...
so Seagates are more likely to have problems than WD Drives?
Very much appreciate the video presentation.
I know data recovery can be time consuming, expensive with no guarantee.
It's why I do my best to advise my customers the importance of backups.
amazing video! congrats on the recovery. I try not to hate on a single company but every drive I have that is in a non-working or barely-working state is a seagate. I just bought a new drive for my server, and decided to go with WD.
Strangely relaxing ..
That's because it's boring. I watched it on 2x speed though.
you need to be very relaxed to do this )
Oh gosh I hope the people here in Germany are just as good as you are. I have all of my customers' pictures on there (I'm a photographer) and I'd be screwed if they can't recover my data. I'm so worried.
Thank you so much for watching.
do not power it off? of Corse the customer already tried powering the drive many times before they gave it to you
"He who laughs last must have made a backup!" ;)
I used to do PC repair and one of the worst situations I ran across was a music producer who had about 2 months of audio data on an HDD that went bad and we had to refer him to a data recovery service (though I can't remember if we had specific ones to recommend if they chose that route).
The irony when "My Documents Backup" is on a drive that needed to be recovered
This was both very interesting and relaxing to watch.
I always handled hard drives with so much care, but now i think I will with even more. They are such amazing and complex devices that need all that care. When i see someone carelessly putting their laptop on a desk and hear it hitting the desk i cringe so much
All that technical details... looks like each data recovery is a case study.
Probably explains the price of those services I guess....
The Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 doesn't need to be dropped in order to fail. It's one of the worst POS drives that was ever made.
So true, 8 out of 10 died in my NAS. After completely switching to Hitachi 3 years ago, I've had no failures anymore at all.
I'm running an ST3000DM008 and it's working great.
3 of mine died within a week from eachother, before I had my replacement drives in place.
Backblaze's "Hard disk reliability test" for 2015 shows Seagate ST3000DM001 winning the "worst disk by far"-award with a VERY good margin.
It certainly won my personal lifetime shitlist award hands down.
my ST3000DM003 died without any warning. Was listening to music on it and after it finished the song i heard three loud clicks and it was done. When i power it up it spins, makes three clicks and stops spinning.
I will replace the head as soon as i can afford a donor drive if i can get my hands on one.
This is fascinating to watch and very informative, but just a tip for future videos, please mount your camera in such a way that your drive work fills the frame, probably from above would be best, and at a slight angle inward - That would provide far better detail, we really don't need to see the technician's body in 80% of the picture, it adds nothing to the content.
This is really interesting and appreciate your professionalism. I've moved away from storing any data that is critical on single drives and moved to Raid 6/10 or ZFS, with additional data backup policies. I treat my hard drives with the expectation that they will fail eventually. For the price of recovery, you can just buy a new drive or two.
Very interesting and educational. But whenever I am disassembling anything I have compartmentalized trays for every part - screws, nuts, connectors, you name it. Just dropping screws on the workbench is begging for a visit from Mr. Murphy! Cheers
why in 90% of the video on youtube the hard drive is Seagate???
IT is that bad of a brand?
They own a lot of the market share. Same with Western Digitals. If people only drove Fords and Chevys, those would be the only cars that ever broke down. Not that they are necessarily worse than any other car, just more of them out there.
Seagate is crap... trust me
My experience says yes
my seagates NEVER failed on me
Statistically - for consumer-level drives in the past few years - Hitachi (HGST) drives are the most reliable. But they are more expensive.
I've dropped my external 4TB hard drive several times, it still works.
Isaac Wright What brand do you have?
I have dropped few over the years never had any issues. Last night that all changes, just bumped it, it fell about 12 inches.. doesn't work :(
@@mdyiya WDC WD40EZRZ
Same thing with Seagate BUP Slim 2TB. Still works, I reformatted this one from GPT to MBR to work on legacy hardware unlike the 4TB WD40EZRZ. The 2TB Seagate works with Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10, 11, Server, Embedded. Anything NT-based since Windows 2000. The 4TB WD40EZRZ on the other hand requires Windows XP Professional x64 Edition and later for 64-bit OS, otherwise Windows Vista if using on a 32-bit OS (like a cutie 10.1" netbook). I've dropped the Seagate, thrown it, stepped on it, bit it, still works, no impact on my teeth either when biting in the bite test.
I'm a human ToughBook. I identify as a ToughBook.
Dropped 3TB Seagate??? If you look at a Seagate wrong they brake...
they also break*
And that's why I go with Western Digital
They're the most unreliable drives in existence. Never again Seagate for me...
Had a completely different experience: Bought 2 new and big wd red hdds. Both failed shortly with bad blocks. On other hand, I bought me a pile of used old 1.5tb seagate barracuda 7200.1 and out of 7 operated ones in over 4 years, just one single failed, with SMART warnings days before the actual failure. I will keep using them, in a raid with redundancy of course. To store data on a single drive is stupid anyway.
New Seagate drives are reliable.
That is why every Sysadmins mantra should be backup once, twice, thrice!
Even more so with SSD once they go poof it is game over!
Couldn't agree more.
I think that the reason that you had to replace heads multiple times is that there was a slight warp in the spindle that you missed when you removed the original damaged heads :
th-cam.com/video/vcvNWPPNWSE/w-d-xo.html
The platters are tilting up and down when you rotated them and it can be seen when you look at the platters relative to the metal shield mounted above them.
When the platters are rotating that would make a big obstacle for the new heads to "hop on" and, basically, the heads would hit the edge of one or more platters and you risk damage to the new heads...
I hope that you replaced the spindle or just moved the platters to a donor drive at some point.
Good job!
I find this all fascinating...very geeky. All I have are Seagate drives lol. Never had a problem in fact I have a drive that I bought in 06. I guess I've been very lucky.
Try to do a S.M.A.R.T. test on this drive... you'll see how lucky you are.
10:41 "scratching our heads" - out of a DR specialist's mouth, that sounds almost like a double entendre.
Haha, nice pun!
Awesome video and congrats on the successful recovery!!
+Michael Riston (Mike) Thanks!
same here, i like to ask you a question ACS Data Recovery.
Michael Riston btw your name is familiar to Michael Rosen if you know who that is
Cool video. Thanks for posting. It amazes me that people still don't back up their data.
But, hey. Their stupidity is your job security!
5 nanometers isn't that small. Just be sure not to spill any DNA on your hard drive or stray viruses.
what recovery software are you using ?
I dropped a WD external drive as it was being written to via a disk refresh program I was trialing. No surprise that it stopped working. Tried it briefly later on (against good advice) and it worked for a short while although a bit slow. Stopped again when warmed up, so with nothing to lose (all the data on the NAS anyway) I put it in the fridge for an hour or two and it worked like normal while really chilled, not sure why this was so but thought it interesting observation.
My seagate 1 tb not detecting by pc and in disk management it shows Unallocated data and not initialise......How to recover that dta?
I know - a RAID 5 is NOT a backup - but I have one with 5x 3T seagates (ST3000DM001) - and only had one failed (replaced by a ST3000DM008 as the original DM001 weren't available anymore) - and after rebuild of about 14h all data still there thanks to RAID ...
also: seagates the only brand HDDs ever lasted over half a year - all other brands failed withing the first 6 months
I just finished building a DIY 'clean room' cabinet to open up my 2.0TB WD20EARX hard drive that just stopped reading. I'm hoping the head just needs to be reparked. I'm 'going in' tomorrow... wish me luck.
Great video! Gonna try and do one of these myself. I know, it's harder than it looks, but only one way to learn.
Exactly.
What amazes me is how fragile these things are. The drive literally only fell from 2-3 feet height on a carpeted floor. They should really build these things more sturdy.
Seagate sucks! I had 3 Shitgate drives failing on me in the past 15 years, and zero WD failures so far. Never buy Shitgate drives! Thanks for the video.
You did an absolute great job of recovering the data
but the worst scenario what could happen is if those platters are broken in pieces, in this case you have to puzzle those pieces together and then put them under an microscope, while extracting it,then align that data to other parts of the data were it belonges to, then use error correction to correct corrupted data , to recover and correct data as much as possible, then make backups of it on ssd and hdd drives to make sure it’s (tempuratury) save,
But such process is extreamly difficuilt, time consumming and very $1000 expensive, but it’s worth it if you cannot life without that data.
I bet you that Linus dropped this drive!
Stavrou :D
I cam from a linus video all the way down to here ._.
Jayz2cents drops stuff way more often
It will be fine.
Dayum
Fantastic video. I suppose this skill will be a thing of the past in the next few years now that SSD technology is becoming more affordable and reliable. I have just installed 2 Samsung EVO's, one in my laptop and one in my gaming pc and I won't buy another mechanical drive in the future, the performance difference is astonishing.
Whats is the problem with seagate hard drives. Ive have problems with 2 of this disk with fatal results
Which software is this, starting from 20:13, with imaging, source menu option.
Kindly clarify.
About 15 years ago I had a Maxtor internal drive that was burning inside the computer.
thank you ! i want to kone the name of recovery tools ? can you tell me,thanks !
Deepspar Disk Imager
I quit using Seagate as soon (Over 15 years ago) as I found out how terrible they are. Told a lot of people as well to buy better. I see now Best Buy does not carry them. Wow things seem to catch up to companies that put the shaft to people.
every single SEASHIT drive ive ever had has failed. some with a warning so I was able to copy them to a reliable brand before all data was gone.how this company is still in business is beyond me. they have been sued so many times too
It is extremely sad that a good drive must die in order to recover the faulty one, really really sad.
I definitely don't have the environment or parts for this kind of recovering due to hardware which is why I can only recover drive on the verge of hardware failure or a software failure/accidental erasers.
We usually get multiple uses out of a set of heads, so the legacy of the sacrificial parts drive generally lives on for a couple of recoveries. :)
I tried to take apart a drive like this and the metal casing was stuck like cement.
Sometimes the rubber seal around the edge sticks pretty good and you just have to gently keep working around the perimeter of the drive until it works it's way loose.
My heads and platter have no visible damage, the platters would not spin until I reset the head, now the platter spins no problem, but the head will not move. What would be the next diagnosis? *note: Platter was checked and spins smoothly with no apparent off balance, wobble, or off center motion of any kind. Disk diagnostic tool can read or re-format/ write to disk.
Good job, nice presentation of the data recovery process.
Just a few things.
Is a wood surface ideal, it is not offering any impact resistance (in your video you can hear when you hit the drive into the table.
Parts are assembled with a very specific torque this effects the clearances.
What spindle bearing testing do you do? Eyeballing is not really sufficient.
Could you really charge when you are using reused parts when you say they are easily contaminated and the platters are so delicate.
Enterprise grade drives are built to be more durable than consumer grade drives, not from drops but from daily use. Do you get many of these drives sent in?
Hey, just from curiosity, how much did it cost Scott to get his family pics back?
I wonder the same thing
Hi. I suspect that I dropped my hard drive after attempting to plug it in many times receiving the same message of the hard drive not being recognized. I tried data recovery software, tried checking device manager, even tried to go to my local computer repair service that's a mile away from home (he didn't open the hard drive at all), etc. When plugged in, I don't hear any clicking noises or any similar noises like that. I haven't opened the hard drive yet due to fear of dust ruining it. I'm currently in Florida. Am I pretty much fucked? Also, how long does it take on average and what is the highest cost you charged for data recovery?
How much did this specific case cost if you can reveal that information?
I suspect this is a similar situation with my 500 GB external drive I bought in college that my dad knocked onto the floor about the same distance only a week after I bought it and it was making a klacking noise like the head was slamming into something so I immediately powered it off. I ended up getting another of the same model the next day so I do have a working drive that would quite likely work as a parts drive. I can't get any of the specific make or model numbers right now since they are both hidden away in a storage room at the moment.
How could different sets of head not work? I mean they are all built the same or is it that there are minute micron differences that make the alignment or the patterns or such different so one head assembly would work and another not or is it something else involved?
the first drive you opened seems that the platters are bent, the top one,i can see a wooble min 15.00 when you spin it after you take the heads off.take a good look at the video
i have only one word for Scott and everyone else who fears to one day be in Scott's shoes (so to say)...
And that word is...
Are you ready for it?
B A C K U P !
Hey how much would it cost to have a recovery done on my hard drive? 500gb SATA SEAGATE. PCB Board gets really really hot. and it takes windows like 30 minutes to recognize the drive. After 30 minutes I click into the drive and it does not open the folder.
Can Platters collapse? I took my dropped seagate laptop sized drive apart and it looks like the middle platter has dropped low, they're not evenly spaced
Head was parked properly. Hard drive just clicks and is not recognized anymore
Did it have 3 disks? They have metal spacers between each platter, so it seems impossible for one to be lower than the other. Some disks will have a "blank" where there would be a platter if the capacity were larger, so it can make the spacing look odd.
@@acsdata Thanks for the reply...I wasn't seeing it correctly, I now know it has 2 platters. The head seems to have gone bad... It's a seagate momentus 1TB Laptop drive, I have the right head comb on the way, and am planning to try to swap in a good head. to see if I can pull the data off it. Top platter looks good, head was found parked on ramp, and wont mount the platters.
I would suggest an overhead view for the camera
These hard drives are a pain, because I bought a few 5 TB drives to store my photos and one for my docs, but once you start adding more and more data, they stop working. It's as if we are going back to the days of record paying LP's/vinyls except, in a "miniature" form. How much do you charge for data recovery? thanks.
Data recovery costs vary greatly depending on the size of the hard drive and the type of failure that has occurred. You can visit our website at acsdata.com or give us a call to get more information.
If a hard drive is not running, i.e. with parked heads, can it still get damaged by dropping?
Having backups = no need to give lots of money to data recovery place. Even outdated backups are saviors (especially with laptop drives that usually - but not always - will still spin up and mount after a drop).
"Really there is no other way to do it .....", really? I saw in other TH-cam videos people use a special tool, called Comb, to remove the reading head. I am surprised that pro like you don't use this tool. Can you tell why?
Luke Li Anyone can order head combs. Ours are different.
I wanted to commend you all on a great instructional video as to what goes into data recovery. Your methods seem pure and your intentions and resulting costs are true to your trade and expertise. I wanted to ask when shipping a drive through standard services whether it be in for recovery or just normal day-in/day-out transport, what steps for protection do you recommend? When it comes to storing a hard drive archive (digital picture images) do you recommend any special care such as spinning up the hardware quarterly of semi-annually? Do you recommend one drive over another for quality and serviceability in data recovery or are they all about the same? Thanks for the great video!
Thank you. To protect the drive during shipping, we recommend wrapping it in 4 or 5 layers of bubble wrap and putting it in a well fitting box so it doesn't bounce around. I'd store a drive the same way, and maybe test it out once or twice a year. Hitachi's seem to have the best track record of the newer drives. Thanks again for the kind words.
Thanks for the vid, it's great. Just wondering 1. What do you do with drives that have FDE like FileVault or Bitlocker? Are they unreadable unless you can image the whole thing? (And have the password/RK of course) and 2. Do you get many failed SSDs coming through and how successful is the recovery process?
As long as we have a complete image and the password/key we can recover any type of encrypted drive. We get quite a few failed SSD's, and they are much more expensive to recover. As long as the chips aren't fried, the data should be recoverable on them.
You can see a vertical wobble in the dark shadow when you rotate the platters at 15:00... (dark shadow of the plate at the top left, hanging over the top platter). This a warped platter?
What did you charge for this recovery?
Very impressive! I enjoy working with both hardware and software on my computers very much and this is one of very few things i would never try at home. Manually editing file systems with a hex editor and dd - yes! Opening the drives and work with the internals - no!
Like I said, very impressive!
DD is such a life saver. I once had to dd a drive that wouldn't boot to a file, mount the file, run diagnostics and repair, then rewrite the file to the drive. Thank goodness that particular OS kept it's own boot sector backup :D
Just as I'm trying to archive stuff to Blu-ray discs right now, I have a question: So how much would a recovery by you that goes *exactly* like this one cost?
(I'm not trying to say that there will be another one exactly like this, but telling me that would give me an idea of how much my bank account would need to worry if I ever needed this level of service.)
I'm curious what software you were using? The dialog boxes are DOS 5/6 era MFC controls.
I need to find some type of data storage method that is reliable and will be available to me 5-10 or more years from now. I thought about a cloud, but I don't know what happens to your photos when you stop paying the monthly fee, or whatever the case may be.
I would say the only solid backup plan, is having multiple backups. Maybe have one or two local external drives, and then syncing one of those drives to an Amazon S3 bucket. That gives you two different locations, and is pretty much the method we use.
Sorry for my English, it's not the native one and do not have subtitles in the video. . .
Please inform which software is used from the 22:00 minute and what is its function?
Thanks!
Those must have been some seriously dank memes.
I just take the time to backup all my important photos and other data to at least 4 external hard drives (2 Western Digital and 2 Seagate), and I keep 2 drives off site. One is kept at my in-laws house, and another at my mom's house. Chances are astronomically small that I will lose all my data this way.
we got a hp pc at work right now I had to replace the hdd in it the original was a 2tb Seagate dm family drive that has 7000 bad sectors according to the Linux live cd we used to see if it's accessible. I'm trying to clone it to the new drive but it's looking grim
This is actually really interesting to me and I'm learning what I can, even though I don't think these are intended for instructional purposes. However, how would someone go about learning and mastering how to do this correctly? Is there schooling? Or is there some sort of internship one can do? Hope to hear back!
Laptop drives are far more droppable than desktop. They often don't survive unscathed, but they usually will spin back up and read data, though a gigabyte or so won't be readable.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing!
16:00 You can still replace the board, you just need to swap a chip too so data matches.
doesn't the phones speaker magnet interfere with the disk platter when you are tacking the photo?
how sensitive are the disk? can a fridge magnet scramble the data ?
pls reply
A good cigar punch can cut out the tape so you don't warp or dull your torx.
approx. how much would that job be ?
I accidentally started a storage space process on my HD. it formatted my drive. when I use recovery software to retrieve the files the files aren't useable. is the drive totally screwed or can it be recovered completely to the point the files work again?