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
February 9th, 2026, 15:04
Hi friends,
i have a 16TB HC550 fw. ver. PCGNW870. The drive is according to wdckit in "unretrievable" state. I cant get any more info, firmware update fails instantly too. Is this drive repairable or not? It does not click or make any noises, just some very short rw noise occasionally. Would someone be so kind to help me atleast diagnose what kind of failure it has?
Best regards
February 9th, 2026, 20:24
Try a USB enclosure and see if the disk is available that way. Try a Windows laptop and see if it can recognize the disk. It is possible that the file system is corrupted as well.
I use server disks in my shop so I have some experience.
February 9th, 2026, 23:20
Can you retrieve a SMART report?
https://ww.reddit.com/r/datarecoverysoftware/wiki/index/smart/If not, then the drive most likely has a head/media/firmware fault.
February 10th, 2026, 4:38
Hi, smart data are unreadable, but the wdckit log revealed an errror FFh and Status 2Fh. The physical media is inacessible.
February 10th, 2026, 8:55
but the wdckit log revealed an errror FFh and Status 2Fh. The physical media is inacessible.
edit: The error is not 2Fh but 2h.
February 10th, 2026, 14:36
Ive installed hugo, and checked if the sanitize is in progress but its not running, but ive managed to get a binary log, will someone help to diagnose, whats happened?
- Attachments
-
- 4ZH61UUV_10022026_181103_smrbin_3.3.1.0.zip
- (918 Bytes) Downloaded 21 times
February 10th, 2026, 14:56
The log contains the result of the Identify Device command. I suspect that this info comes from the PCB rather than the platters.
February 10th, 2026, 15:04
Any other logs are failing with error -65538
February 10th, 2026, 17:00
It sounds like there is no access to the "discware" area on the platters, in which case there is probably no DIY solution for you.
February 10th, 2026, 17:48
I suspect that the disk has failed which is unusual with server disks.
February 10th, 2026, 22:42
If discware, and if you don't have pro tools I'd be curious if a format w/Hugo would restore the translator and give you UA access.
I cannot recall if SMART needs to work - I forget as PC3000 added the function natively:
- Code:
f -s SERIALNUMBER --fastformat
*serial number must be in caps.
Not like you have anything to loose if you're not pursuing pro DR.
February 10th, 2026, 23:42
Just digging up some previous cases at our lab for you; SMART did NOT work.
This is prior to PC3000 supporting translator rebuild on these models.
ABR on all sectors.
That said, without diagnostic output you certainly could have a heads issue / SA damage.
February 13th, 2026, 11:10
I have the 18TB version of the HC550. My disk is the WUH721818ALE6L4. SMART works fine on my hard disk. If SMART fails I suggest wiping the disk with Seatools and then try again. The HC550 are older model disks and my disk is real old by server standards.
I keep my disk in a USB enclosure and it has racked up 30,000 hours as it is on 24/7. Many other disks have even more hours.
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