Hi fellas, I've recently had a 1TB Seagate ST31000340AS drive (Firmware SD15 Manufactured in Thailand) BSOD on me to no longer being recognized in BIOS.

Various data recovery websites as well as the numerous Newegg customer reviews here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148274, confirm this drive/fw has an incredibly high failure rate, with some users describing clicking and most that the drive (becomes) no longer recognizable in BIOS.

Is there a commonality in failure of this drive (eg firmware corruption) that any of you have identified?

I had purchased two of these drives and have only used the 1 which failed. The second is new on the shelf; I'm tempted to swap the controller over, to retest. I do not have the facility to troubleshoot further, and will be looking to a data-recovery firm to recover 2 directories (approx. 25GB) if unsuccessful.

Can anyone shed insight to this drive? Is it generally recoverable? etc. The drive lasted 3 months for me, no abnormal clicking, just the occasional (approx. 1 week) BSOD at cut and paste or delete of a directory containing a large number of sub dirs or files.

I have recorded the isolated drive in it's current state here:http://tinyurl.com/685saz (1MB .wav) and here: http://tinyurl.com/6j2mj7 (686K .wav) demonstrating power on/spin up.

Any advice or direction is greatly appreciated. I'm in Melbourne, Australia.

Thank you,
Jeff

You can see in this forum many discussions concerning Seagate 7200.11 drives. Failures commonly arise from firmware problems in the service area of the disk. At present, these issues are addressable only by Seagate themselves and, if they are to be believed, a couple of others who claim they have "cracked" the code. By the end of the year, a solution should be available to a large number of professional data recovery services. In other words, if you have the luxury of waiting a couple of months you can probably save a chunk of money if you choose to pursue professional recovery.

Thank you msurgeon. Clearly the service area is out of my reach, nor do I have the command set to resolve this on my own. I've been quoted $1350 by a local outfit who has resolved 7200.11 corruption issues in the past.

Given the circumstances of 7200.11, and the real possibility the data will be 100% recoverable, $1350. is reasonable.

Anyone doing these for less? US or AUS Based?

When this "becomes cracked" as you say, and I know it's hard to speculate, do you reckon the cost to recover/repair will halve or?

Thanks all for the heads up re 7200.11 and PM's I have received from members with direction.

Jeff

Have you tried google? I have been searching on google for solutions for this problem and there are more and more topics about this in threads of other forums and web sites worldwide, even Seagate's forums. No solution but lots of clues around.

I have a hdd with a similar problem. one company i sent it to has been unable to resolve the issue.. i assume seagate can fix recover these drives easily but at a high cost? what other companies are there?

Ontrack can fix this SA problem.

is this true?

I spoke with a recovery tech at Seagate Australia, telling him I had a firmware corruption in 7200.11. I asked for a quote for firmware fix only, assuming nothing else was wrong with the drive. I was quoted a minimum of $1200 with a maximum $2200. If you read the customer reviews for my drive (link in post 1 of this thread) you'll see various Seagate quotes from $1700 upwards. So yeah, at high cost I would say.

Jeff

I have taken the drive to http://www.payam.com.au/

I'll report back next week with outcome.

Jeff

redo the update firmware on the drive that might help you

hmm ontrack say they can fix hard drives that have been in fires and got damaged.
its hard to think why this company talks bullshite all the time




this company gets around 500,000 hard drives a year from around the world

and most of the problems are virus or someone who deleted there information by mistake.

now wouldnt we all like a bit of that piece of pie then

Jeffvox, how did you go with payam data recovery? Were they able to get everything back for you yet? Good luck!

Hello everyone,

I'm pleased to report Payam was able to recover 100% of my data as well as flash the firmware of the faulty drive allowing it to again be recognizable in BIOS and usable (no mind, I will zero and RMA).

I supplied them with:
1 1TB Faulty 7200.11
1 1TB new Seagate 7200.11 (for mirroring of faulty drive)
1 80GB (for recovery of essential directories nominated at drop off)

In terms of the recovery process, they first recovered 3 key dirs (approx. 40GB of data to the 80GB)
I believe they next mirrored all data from the faulty drive to new (approx. 700GB all OK)
Once drive mirror was successful, they flashed the corrupt firmware making the faulty drive OK

As I understand it, the drive was mirrored prior to firmware flash with recovery being the primary goal in case firmware flash didn't take or caused further issues.

In terms of price, I opted for priority service $1350AUD/$877USD (inc GST). Drive was dropped by the Melbourne office late Friday. I received a phone call mid-day Monday (their next working day) alerted that the 3 essential directories had been recovered, and mirroring etc. would take another day. Overall I was told the drive looked healthy and there was a very good chance of full recovery. The drive was ready before closing on Tuesday (today), which is effectively a 2 day turnaround.

Payam offer the same services at an Economy rate of 50% off, which means your drive goes into a queue and priority jobs are completed first. In my situation, the average Economy wait was approx. 2 weeks, but can be pushed back further again dependent on emergency recovery. I simply could not wait for economy.

Economy recovery runs $675AUD for this job (firmware corruption) which is just $438USD !!! Astounding!

Was told, they have resolved a number of these firmware corrupted 7200.11's in both the Syndey and Melbourne offices. I can not speak highly enough of the professionalism and service of the guys in Melbourne. Highly recommended.

As an end user, I appreciate the information I received on the forums and thank you all.

Jeff

Good info... Surprisingly cheap.

_________________
You don't have to backup all of your files, just the ones you want to keep.

I suspect Payam were the beta testers for the latest update of Seagate HDD Doctor.

I emailed Payam a few weeks ago as i have outsourced a few jobs to them in the past when i was unable to help my clients as they are in Australia too, they told me they used PC-3000 in terminal mode to complete the firmware repair or 1 1 TB disk i sent them with this same problem a few weeks ago. The disk i sent them was returned unopened so it did not have new heads or anything. When i tried to get some clues as to how it was done from them - they told me they used PC-3000 in terminal mode only.

No mention of Salvation data tools. I sent them my disk a few weeks ago when i was unable to find a solution. I paid and got the data back - i'll be downloading the salvation data update today so i can do this in-house myself now easily! Hooray for Laura and Salvation data! Good work on getting the solution out 1st.

Laura, can you provide any info - Do Payam Data Recovery do any Beta testing for your products?

The only reason I say this is because on the website it shows pictures of their clean room and they have the platter exchanger so obviously they are slavation customer.

HDD Spaz, i called Payam data recovery today to see if he was a beta tested and ask them how i could become one to get insider info like this. He said he found the solution before AceLabs and Before Salvation data released their updates. They said they do use Salvation data and Ace lab tools but do not have any access to beta testing at all. He laughed and said they both have enough bugs already - they said they don't want a more buggy version!

He actually offered to sell the solution to Salvation data and AceLabs a few weeks ago but they said they would think about it as they (Salvation and acelabs) had already invested a lot developing their own solution and were not sure if they needed it or not. In the end i was told the solution to this problem was sold to another 3rd party last week instead on an exclusive basis.

I'm just glad Salvation and Ace Labs now have a fix for this - i'll have to download the updates ASAP and try them out!!

Thanks Salvation and Ace Labs for spending the time to find a fix for this problem for the rest of us.

P.S I love how salvation updates are free! Paying Acelabs each year is a real pain but it's one of those things you can't really live without i guess.

...or invest some time and find your own for 'free'...