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
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Seagate external enclose failed - internal drive faulty too?

June 17th, 2017, 3:08

I have a Seagate Central 4TB which suddenly stopped working after 26 months (2 months outside warranty period!). Having done research on these now it seems that they have an atrocious failure rate, but back when I bought it I still believed Seagate were reputable.

The unit powers on however the indicator LED would only show orange, and the NIC activity lights were completely dead. I've pulled the internal drive (ST4000DM000) and tested a different known working drive in the enclosure but the same issue persisted, so I believe the enclosure control board may have overheated.

In an attempt to recover the data, I followed the guide found here (https://myanwyn.blogspot.com.au/2014/08 ... -data.html) and connected the Seagate drive with a SATA->USB enclosure.

Using ExtFS for OSX and then also Ubuntu; the drive initially spins up but then makes a brief click (head hitting something?) and is slow to be detected. I can then hear no further spinning activity from it and the partition is not recognised.

Here is a video of the drive being powered on (sound is quiet so you may need to turn the volume up):
https://youtu.be/RFQ-E1OEqdI

The data doesn't have any monetary value but it contains a lot of sentimental photos that I'd like to recover. Could anybody help to diagnose what the issue may be from the above video please?

Re: Seagate external enclose failed - internal drive faulty

June 17th, 2017, 23:28

Heads are dead.

I'm afraid your only way is to toss the drive and move along.
Otherwise, it would need clean room work by a decent pro. These drives are difficult to recover, and have extremely high failure rate on their media as well. You should expect an expensive data recovery quote on this one.
Sorry :(

Re: Seagate external enclose failed - internal drive faulty

June 18th, 2017, 2:36

+1

100% the drive has physical issues with heads and/or media

Absolutely nothing you can do yourself :-(

Re: Seagate external enclose failed - internal drive faulty

June 18th, 2017, 16:22

juz wrote:The unit powers on however the indicator LED would only show orange, and the NIC activity lights were completely dead. I've pulled the internal drive (ST4000DM000) and tested a different known working drive in the enclosure but the same issue persisted, so I believe the enclosure control board may have overheated.

In an attempt to recover the data, I followed the guide found here (https://myanwyn.blogspot.com.au/2014/08 ... -data.html) and connected the Seagate drive with a SATA->USB enclosure.

Code:
Model: ATA ST4000DM000-1F21 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 4001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name                Flags

1      1049kB  22.0MB  21.0MB  ext2         Kernel_1            msftdata
2      22.0MB  43.0MB  21.0MB  ext2         Kernel_2            msftdata
3      43.0MB  1117MB  1074MB  ext4         Root_File_System_1  msftdata
4      1117MB  2190MB  1074MB  ext4         Root_File_System_2  msftdata
5      2190MB  3264MB  1074MB  ext4         Config              msftdata
6      3264MB  4338MB  1074MB               Swap
7      4338MB  5412MB  1074MB  ext4         Update              msftdata
8      5412MB  4001GB  3995GB               Data                lvm

The "different known working drive" would not have had the "msftdata" partitions. IIUC, these partitions contain the OS for the box.

Re: Seagate external enclose failed - internal drive faulty

June 19th, 2017, 17:56

Thanks for your help all, not the news I wanted to hear but I half expected it.
Time to invest in a disk mirroring NAS this time around...

Re: Seagate external enclose failed - internal drive faulty

June 20th, 2017, 13:13

juz wrote:Thanks for your help all, not the news I wanted to hear but I half expected it.
Time to invest in a disk mirroring NAS this time around...



And And And ,
Not Using Seagate Anymore ,Please Invest in a Decent Drive From Other Companies
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