Switch to full style
Data recovery and disk repair questions and discussions related to old-fashioned SATA, SAS, SCSI, IDE, MFM hard drives - any type of storage device that has moving parts
Post a reply

ST4000DM000 Head replacement advice

December 6th, 2025, 14:48

Hi
I got RAID0 with 6 - ST4000DM000 drives, one of them has a head issue,
I cloned all other remaining HDDs to use them as donors for the damaged HDD.
But with every head replacement, it starts to copy fine until it hits the first bad sector and HDD repower, then the head dies again.
I replaced head 4 times and managed to image only a few GB, with every repower the head dies.
Also tried to swap the top magnet, head ramp, bottom magnet, also import head adaptive every time, but still the same issue. The head dies with the first repower.

Is there any advice, please? I have the last donor to try it.

Re: ST4000DM000 Head replacement advice

December 6th, 2025, 19:33

It seems that your ST4000DM000 which is an older version of the 4TB disks I still use. My 4TB disks are the ST4000DM005. I use my old disks for media conversions etc.

I suggest if you can find a donor disk, try it and see if your can recover any data but the errors suggest the platter(s) may be damaged.

You also need a clean room as dust can damaged disks.

RAID0 is duplicate copies of data. So if another disk is working your will have all data. I suggest new hard disks as your model disks are over 10 years old now.

Re: ST4000DM000 Head replacement advice

December 7th, 2025, 4:56

Hardcore Games wrote:I suggest if you can find a donor disk, try it and see if your can recover any data but the errors suggest the platter(s) may be damaged.

You also need a clean room as dust can damaged disks.
.


Of course every head swap was inside clean cleanroom, with identical donor.
My question, why the head die after repower. And what to do to increase the DR chance

Re: ST4000DM000 Head replacement advice

December 7th, 2025, 8:17

RAID0 is not redundant so is needed.
Is there pattern to which surface whrn reading causes errors and restarting?

Re: ST4000DM000 Head replacement advice

December 9th, 2025, 10:35

such problem requires special process to get the max out of the damaged component. Simple head swaps are pointless imo.

Re: ST4000DM000 Head replacement advice

December 9th, 2025, 15:37

If the platter(s) are damaged then the recovery is almost impossible.

Re: ST4000DM000 Head replacement advice

December 9th, 2025, 21:09

a partial recovery is usually possible.

Re: ST4000DM000 Head replacement advice

December 10th, 2025, 14:50

Partial recovery requires a disk assembly to be able to find the servo track.

This is why I harp on backup, backup and more backups. Dead disks are a pain in the butt and best of times. Dead SSD are even more of a headache as 99/100 dead ones are due to controller problems.

My orico box has 5 disks in it and I have several USB enclosures as well for multiple redundant backups.

7-zip can make TAR files which are not compressed. Large TAR backups are quick to copy while small files are sluggish at best. I copy TAR files to 2 or more disks for redundant backups. TAR files go back to mainframe and minicomputers and TAR is tape archive from when tape was a 9-column floor unit or maybe a 1/2" cartridge from 1984.
Post a reply