I have a 3TB Seagate ST3000DM001 that has already been to one company, so I have no idea what they've done. It comes ready and images flawlessly, very fast for about 95 million sectors. From there it starts to bog down. I can get it to continue reading a few million more sectors if I have it ignore ECC errors. Then it just freezes up. Not a single sector can be read anywhere else on the drive from that point on. I know the heads are perfectly fine. I can't imagine every single part of the platter beyond that point is damaged. Anyone else seen anything like this?

Probably the translator has been messed with.

Was the previous companies quote declined by any chance?

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No. The customer had them make the attempt, but then they reported that only a portion of the data was recoverable, but it wasn't enough to be worthwhile. The translator is the first thing that popped into my mind, but it didn't make sense that over 40GB of the drive was ok. It also didn't make sense how it started to get slower and slower as it progressed past the 95 millionth sector. But I guess I've just never had this issue crop up.

I don't see that there would be any way to correct the issue if they messed with the translator. I'm always very cautious when it comes to that on F3 drives. Feel free to PM if preferred. Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Seems clear that the previous company was nothing more than a computer shop with very limited tools or knowledge about data recovery.

It could be a translator issue or a weak/failing head issue.

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Luke
Recovery Force Donor Inventory: 5,000+ Fully Cataloged HDDs & Growing

I agree with that sentiment. The heads though seem to work flawlessly until it's like the drive just hits a wall at around 95 million sectors.

It is a Seagate DM series, so more than likely has media damage.

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Are you sure all heads stop reading at that point or could it just be one head? That would certainly help narrow in on which scenario it is.

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Luke
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It seems to be every head. I went through and checked a very wide range of regions, focusing on about 25 million sectors for each region. Incrementing about 100,000 sectors at a time within each region.

did they open top cover.? (platter side)

No.

i think this is partial sector access error. try to backup sys and repair it.

i think that previous DR center did not change any fw according to your post.

@ gtd4242

i replied with steps. chk PM

even if 40GB is readable the translator could well be bad. However, if it gets slower gradually it does not look like translator.

even more however, i think the disk has 2 problems: bad surface and bad translator which was produced at previous dr...

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few days ago he sent me a PM as a reply. this is partial access error. this is his PM. i will paste here


" Thanks so much. It is definitely getting more sectors that are accessible now. Still hitting a stopping point around the 20% mark. But it's better than it was."

Slowly working this out. Worked with the translator a bit more and it's about half way through with imaging the entire drive. So it is definitely doing much better.

Also, DDI is about the only thing working to get this imaged. And that was only after I extended the read sector time out considerably and customized the error handling for each sector. PC3000 was just not working well on this. Even after the translator rebuild, it was reading more of the drive, but it was extremely slow. It would read a few sectors, stall and stay in a BSY state until it powered itself off. Now it images fast, it will hit a bump, stall for a second and then keep going eventually getting up to a fast pace again. It's a weird drive for sure, but at least it's getting good data off of it now.

The more Seagates you do, you will find this sort of translator/slow reading issue is pretty common. You are also correct that some drives react better to certain imagers. Always good to have a few at your disposal.

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