Good Evening,

I am new to posting on the board, but have been a long time viewer. I appreciate all the help that the community provides, and hope that everyone is doing well.

Today I come to you all with an issue regarding a Seagate ST2000DM001 2TB HDD (PN# 9YN164-568 , FW CC96 , Date 12027 , DOM 07/2011 - with PCB #100645422 REV A and PCB ROM firmware 25FS406 , 01, 1RH00). The drive was removed from an external Seagate enclosure after the owner reported that the external enclosure had experienced intermittent connectivity issues. The owner described that the external enclosure (which lays on its side), would sometimes experience issues that would require him to jimmy the USB cable until it was detected by Windows. He further reported that the drive saw a decrease in performance and began taking long periods of time to read/write data. As a result, he asked that I help him transfer the data off the drive and onto a new one.

Day 1 - I received the drive (in the enclosure) and did not observe any signs of damage to the outer enclosure. No water damage or broken plastic was seen. I inspected the power and USB ports on the enclosure and they appeared to be clean and free of bending or damage. I attempted to plug the external drive into a Windows 7 and Windows 10 PC, both of which failed to recognize the drive. After a bit of manipulation with the USB cable and turning the external enclosure onto its other side, it was detected as G:\ drive by Windows. However, after a lengthy period of time (~10 minutes), the contents of the drive were still not readable. Windows reported that the disk could not be accessed one of the times and the other time it said the drive was not formatted. Both times I could heard the hard drive spin up and the arm engage, with no significant ticking (only an occasional tick of the arm moving across the platter, but not striking the housing).

Day 2 - I removed the hard drive from the enclosure and observed that the exterior of the drive appeared to be in good order. The pins appeared to be clean, no signs of damage or moisture were observed on any part of the pins, underneath the PCB, or on the case itself. I plugged the drive into a Windows 10 PC using SATA cables and took note that Windows took approximately 5 minutes to boot (usually 10 seconds). Once Windows had booted, the drive was not recognized. I restarted and experienced the same in the BIOS, with a long post time and the drive not recognized. I cleaned all the contacts with QD Contact Cleaner and a coffee filter, including underneath the PCB and the SATA pins. The problem persisted and the drive was not recognized. Again, I could hear the hard drive spin up and the arm engage with the same occasional ticking of the arm moving across the platter.

Day 3 - I removed the PCB and examined it for damage. I viewed a small amount of corrosion on the board (see attached photo), but no overt signs of damage. He claims that there was never any moisture or liquid in contact with the external HDD, and the corrosion is unexplained. I cleaned all contacts on the board using QD and the coffee filter, making sure that it was completely dry before re-attaching. The HD contact points for the motor and data were both also cleaned the same way. Despite this, the drive still was still not recognized with SATA connections to the PC. I further tried another external enclosure and observed the same (no discovery of the HDD).

Day 4 - I opened the top of the hard drive, exposing the platter and arm. The arm was in the home position and not laying across the platter. I did not observe any signs of damage or moisture to the platter, the arm, or inside of the HDD. Powering the HDD on with SATA as well as the external drive with the top off yielded the same results. The discs spun beautifully and the arm engaged properly with typical twitchy movement from the head. The arm slid across the platter with ease and did not appear to get hung up or show any mechanical issues/defects. After initial startup (from being powered on), the arm would repeat the same movement over and over (see attached video).

Day 5 - I got creative and remembered after remembering he said he experienced intermediate connectivity issues before the drive failure. I used the new external drive enclosure with the HDD and turned the HDD on its side with the letter "S" in Seagate facing up and the last letter "e" in Seagate pointing down. (see attached photo). Upon powering it up, the drive was detected in windows as G:\. However, attempts to read the drive met with long wait times (around 5-7 minutes) followed by the message in Windows that the drive could not be accessed. Furthermore, R-Studio reported seeing the drive, reported it to be a 2TB HD, and reported the brand correctly. However, upon attempts to "scan" the drive, I received the error that the drive was unable to be scanned. The very interesting part is that when I lay the drive flat, or on its other side, or upside down, it doesn't detect it whatsoever. Only when laying on its side with the "S" in Seagate facing up, will it be detected by Windows at ALL. I have tried jiggling and manipulating the SATA connection to achieve different outcomes with this, but have still not been able to read the data. Sometimes, it will not show the drive at all, and manipulating the external enclosure onto an angle is the only way to get it to recognize. For this alone, I suspect the PCB as it would be the only logical assessment of the intermittent connectivity issue.

Day 6 - I am many hours of research in and have only found several possible solutions including the following:

1. Replace the PCB and transfer the ROM chip from the old PCB to the new one of the same type.
2. Replace the Arm/Head from a donor drive of the exact same type.
3. Remove the platters and insert into a brand new donor drive of the exact same type
a. (this can be tricky as there are TWO platters in this type of drive and I will require the special tool and negative air environment to do properly)
4. Short Circuit Method (I am not quite sure HOW to do this successfully when the drive is NOT being detected sufficiently to time the short circuit to bypass the firmware load.
a. I assume this requires a serial cable and/or additional hardware and the appropriate com port terminal software (I am not sure which to use for both)
b. Perhaps someone can assist with this, if it is a viable option?
5. Send away to a data recovery specialist (this is absolutely the last ditch effort as I would greatly prefer to fix this for him given that money is a serious issue for him).


The overall goal here is for me to recover his personal files, mostly family photos and work documents. I don't care about the physical drive itself which will be destroyed after successfully backing up his personal files.

Thank you all very much in advance. I truly appreciate it.




I am seeking assistance with my problem and if anyone here has guidance for me to follow. Assuming that I shall replace the PCB on this drive, I believe that switching the ROM chip to the new PCB would be required. I am "decent" with soldering, but not a professional by any means.










PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO

https://youtu.be/x9lGMrOk-bU



Thank you all again.

In all the viewing of the forum, and research, you never came across advice to NEVER open a drive outside a clean environment (clean room, cabinet)?

It is not a PCB problem, so don't waste time replacing it.
Don't swap platters to another drive, as you there isn't a problem with the motor.

It is likely a firmware or mechanical-heads problem.

Without more advanced testing, tools and knowledge cannot make progress.
Perhaps, it is best to start with posting the terminal output here, which should have been the best course of action from the get go.
With Seagate recoveries, terminal output analysis is your best friend.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Thanks for the reply. Could you link me to a guide on how to provide a proper terminal output analysis? I have searched and can't come up with it. I understand it requires the serial port, but can't find what proper procedure to use (including what hardware setup, software, etc.)

Did you open it outside of a clean room? If so, DO NOT power the drive on again, and send it to a DR company that does have a clean room.
To me this sounds either like a F/W issue. There are plenty of tutorials online for creating a TTL adapter and interact with the terminal, but again, you're better off sending it off to professionals with experience in this area, as one wrong command can brick your HDD forever.
Word of warning, if you do send it to DR experts, they will quote you a fortune since it has already been opened.

_________________
Will recover data for food

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Disaster.

Judging by the behavior of the drive on your video, it didn't even look like it needed opening.
Now you've added more trouble to the equation.

I'll stop pointing fingers now and get reasonable:

ASK THE OWNER how important his/her work documents and family photos are. If they mean anything to him/her, then stop playing around and send the drive to a good pro. One of the most reputable members of this forum is located in Atlanta and their pricing is more than reasonable. It might be cheaper than you think.
If s/he thinks s/he has nothing to lose, then connect drive to COM port and post terminal output here. You might be able to salvage something of it, but I'd expect the worse.

Good luck.

PS. ABSOLUTELY forget the other options you posted, like swapping PCB, heads and platters.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Look for something like this: https://www.ebay.com/p/1831849389
Some of those terminal adapters are tricky with voltage, so buy at your own risk.
You can search fzabkar's posts.. He posted often about this.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Could you forward me his info (PM is fine)? If the price is right, I will lay out the money for him to get his photos/documents back. I feel bad for him and he really doesn't have much.

As far as the room goes, I run negative air in the room when opening any HDD. It has not been an issue in the past. As far as the data goes, he says it's very important, but doesn't have the money for local data recovery (literally asking $1,000+).

I purchased the following:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LR ... UTF8&psc=1


If the user who does recovery is priced too high for our affordability, I will connect with the adapter and run putty to get a terminal log.


Thank you and everyone else for the help thus far.

I've replied to your PM earlier today.
In case you can't read it for some reason, you should contact Jon at datasaversllc.com

Good luck.

_________________
http://www.northwind.gr
SandForce SSD Recovery
Ransomware Reverse Engineering - NoMoreRansom! partners

Update -

I have PuTTY installed and the proper COM port drivers established. Here is the Terminal readout from PuTTY




Boot 0x40M
Spin Up[0x00021E10][0x000222A8][0x00022740]
Trans.

Rst 0x40M
Spin Up
(P) SATA Reset




After that, it just hangs. Ctrl+Z doesn't do anything and no prompt shows up. I have tried it with and without blocking the contacts for the drive head. When blocking the contacts for the drive head, it hangs at Boot 0x40M Spin Up

Again, even with the contacts blocked (post-it method), there is no ability to ctrl+z myself into the prompt. Instead, I just have a window that hangs right there.




Any thoughts?

Search for "shorting read channel".
Either way, you will need a powerful cloning tool to make progress with it.
Even if addressing firmware issues, these drives are very unstable and won't work with connecting to computer and pull the files off directly.

_________________
Hard Disk Drive, SSD, USB Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Drive data was saved by a data repair company. Mods, please delete the thread.

Thanks!

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread, but I am apparently inept at figuring out how to PM on this forum. Northwind, can you PM me the information you have on the Atlanta-based data recovery service? I'm having the same issue with this model of HDD but local data recovery services are prohibitively expensive.