Does this head look right to you?

[machasm]

I have recently developed a problem with a Seagate barracuda 2Tb ST2000DM001. After finally throwing in the towel on trying to resurrect it i was curious to see if there was a mechanical problem so i opened it up (I have a backup so no data loss) and found the heads. To me it looks like one of the heads are missing but wasnt sure if this was intentional. I have attached a pic to see for yourselves and to get your verdict on it. I wasn't able to find any evidence of a head floating around in the case nor any scratches on the platters so am not sure if this is by design.
Thanks Mac.

Attachments

Head pic.

[deftrue]

ISTM that there's a missing head or slider, but the picture is not clear enough. Sometimes this is normal (missing complete slider piece). Would you mind to take another picture, trying to focus on the right spot a little bit more?

[pcimage]

Have seen this many times on ST2000DM001 with the complete arm deliberately missing, although often it's the top one missing.

As "deftrue" says, the picture isn't clear enough to determine whether the slider on the bottom is missing/damaged or not.

[fzabkar]

Configuration file from a Grenada firmware update ...

http://www.users.on.net/~fzabkar/HDD/GRCC4CD9.TXT

# 2 DISK 4 HEAD CONFIGURATIONS
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?C.CCD4.AW01AD.CC46.C08B;GRCC4C4H.LOD;GR753C.CCD4.BD02AR.CC4C.C39A
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?C.CCD4.AY01AL.CC47.C392;GRCC4C4H.LOD;GR753C.CCD4.BD02AR.CC4C.C39A
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?C.CCD4.AY07AL.CC48.C392;GRCC4D4H.LOD;GR753C.CCD4.BF01AL.CC4D.C39A
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?C.CCD4.BD01AR.CC49.C399;GRCC4C4H.LOD;GR753C.CCD4.BD02AR.CC4C.C39A

# 3 DISK CONFIGURATIONS, 2TB CAN BE 5 OR 6 HEAD CONFIGURATIONS
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?D.CCD4.AW01AD.CC46.D08B;GRCC4C6H.LOD;GR753D.CCD4.BD02AR.CC4C.D39A
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?D.CCD4.AY01AL.CC47.D392;GRCC4C6H.LOD;GR753D.CCD4.BD02AR.CC4C.D39A
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?D.CCD4.AY07AL.CC48.D392;GRCC4D6H.LOD;GR753D.CCD4.BF01AL.CC4D.D39A
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?D.CCD4.BD01AR.CC49.D399;GRCC4C6H.LOD;GR753D.CCD4.BD02AR.CC4C.D39A

ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?C.CCD4.AW01AD.CC46.D08B;GRCC4C6H.LOD;GR753D.CCD4.BD02AR.CC4C.D39A
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?C.CCD4.AY01AL.CC47.D392;GRCC4C6H.LOD;GR753D.CCD4.BD02AR.CC4C.D39A
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?C.CCD4.AY07AL.CC48.D392;GRCC4D6H.LOD;GR753D.CCD4.BF01AL.CC4D.D39A
ST2000DM001-9YN164;GR75?C.CCD4.BD01AR.CC49.D399;GRCC4C6H.LOD;GR753D.CCD4.BD02AR.CC4C.D39A

[Keatah]

Seems clear enough that the suspension and head is not there.

[machasm]

OK thank you guys. Just seemed weird that the whole side of one platter isnt used since there is no head? Maybe the 3TB version is exactly the same but with the extra head?
Anyway It is in the bin now!

[thatdellguy]

Just seemed weird that the whole side of one platter isnt used since there is no head?

Pretty common. Remember kids, friends don't let friends buy Seagate!

[jermy]

although often it's the top one missing.

it is the top one
picture has been taken upside down

Attachments

image.jpeg (12.38 KiB) Viewed 10141 times

[machasm]

yes it was the top one. As Jermy said, the picture was taken upside down.
I know that these drives have had a bit of a bad rep but are Seagate really that bad? i have owned several over a period of about 20 years and i think that this is the first one i have had develop a fault.
Again thank you for your help.

[day1data]

yes it was the top one. As Jermy said, the picture was taken upside down.
I know that these drives have had a bit of a bad rep but are Seagate really that bad? i have owned several over a period of about 20 years and i think that this is the first one i have had develop a fault.
Again thank you for your help.

Anything with the model "DM" steer clear of, these have a high failure rate. And when they fail they usually take your data with it.

I would like to say nice things about Seagate but these drives bring more headaches then business for us DR Pro's.

[DRUG]

DM series have been designed by someone really mad at work, or with drug addiction issues.

It is, by far, the worst family of drives actually.

Some pros don't even accept jobs from Seagate DM family.

[jermy]

DM series have been designed by someone really mad at work, or with drug addiction issues.

I'm not so sure
nowadays every company is using a highly skilled team, for one thing and one thing only
to came up with a design that will last just long enough till the warranty expires.

after serving me 20 years, my refrigerator died, I bought a new one, and the first thing that caught my attention is, that everytime the door gets open, the motor/compressor (I don't know how to call it (I'm not in the refrigerator business)) stops working, and when it gets closed, it's starts again

do you know what this kind of action causes to the motor/compressor ?

compare it to a power cycle on HDDs

back to Seagate in general and to DM series in particular
from their point of view, I think they pretty much succeeded

[labtech]

yes it was the top one. As Jermy said, the picture was taken upside down.
I know that these drives have had a bit of a bad rep but are Seagate really that bad? i have owned several over a period of about 20 years and i think that this is the first one i have had develop a fault.
Again thank you for your help.

Seagate and their DM series has caught much more criticism because of tremendous technology development and media channels growth from the last couple of years. It's timing.
Most companies who have developed and released drives, just about every single time had a bad apple in the basket. But the people and media weren't as much into publicly criticizing it. Many drives from other manufacturers were crap, but managed to slide by. For ex, WD Green Drive. This trend of criticism will only increase and get more public with all the communication channels available.

Now, Seagate used to have really good drives, matter of fact, many of the older Seagate drives prior to 7200.11 are still around, especially in the upcoming economies in the world.

If you could virtually go into some of the data recovery companies stocking failed drives, you will see small stacks of good drives, and all of a sudden see a giant stack of failed ones from a particular series, just standing out, kind of like a graph.

All in all, have to understand that every company, just like companies in many other industries, auto, computers, etc, have a low end product, with cheaper materials, with some of the same conceptual firmware issues that have transitioned from old architecture to new, and so on. For Seagate, in the last couple of years, was the DM series.

[pepe]

Some pros don't even accept jobs from Seagate DM family.

it is not a failure of the drive, rather of those pros.

[ddrecovery]

it is not a failure of the drive, rather of those pros.

That's not really fair pepe. The issue with the DM series drives is that head failure quite often takes out the platters as well. I have had numerous 3TB DM series drives with head failure. I completed the head swap and the drive continues to click. When the heads are put back in the donor they do not read, confirming physical damage to the platters. As an experiment I told 3 of these clients to send the drive to Seagate Data Recovery. I tracked these cases and all were declared unrecoverable by Seagate.

[drHDD]

Leave bad head along, read good heads and then return to bad head and try to limit head not to go to damaged surface, read what you can read without killing head. Seagate lost a lot good tech's because of moving labs to Oklahoma, so don't expect to get recovered difficult cases from seagate data recovery.

[DRUG]

DM series have been designed by someone really mad at work, or with drug addiction issues.

I'm not so sure
nowadays every company is using a highly skilled team, for one thing and one thing only
to came up with a design that will last just long enough till the warranty expires.

This makes total sense.

[pepe]

it is not a failure of the drive, rather of those pros.

That's not really fair pepe. The issue with the DM series drives is that head failure quite often takes out the platters as well. I have had numerous 3TB DM series drives with head failure. I completed the head swap and the drive continues to click. When the heads are put back in the donor they do not read, confirming physical damage to the platters. As an experiment I told 3 of these clients to send the drive to Seagate Data Recovery. I tracked these cases and all were declared unrecoverable by Seagate.

of course there are though cases where not all data can be recovered. But it does not mean we should reject DM series altogether (as DRUG said). It is another question what's economic and what's not, but i leave that decision to the clients.
I had some interesting cases where i believe SRS would have given up (probably not because they could not do it if they really wanted, but was not economic for them), like where flash was missing, or some grenadas (or other families)having rings on several surfaces, but they are a question of technology (what's in the filter is in the filter, but the rest might be worth trying).
I had a moose where SA was completely unreadable (take it literally), however i could still recover it. I doubt it had been recovered at any of the large companies, however i believe there are a few very skilled guys out there who can do such things.

[gtd4242]

That's not really fair pepe. The issue with the DM series drives is that head failure quite often takes out the platters as well. I have had numerous 3TB DM series drives with head failure. I completed the head swap and the drive continues to click. When the heads are put back in the donor they do not read, confirming physical damage to the platters. As an experiment I told 3 of these clients to send the drive to Seagate Data Recovery. I tracked these cases and all were declared unrecoverable by Seagate.

Have to agree with this statement here. And Seagate with their "$500 flat rate" isn't going to put a lot of time and effort into recovering drives they know have very little chance of recovering.