23/8/2017 – Seagate 2000GB external HDD – not detected by any computer
A Manchester city centre-based Landscape and Ecology consultancy had a considerable number of design files for clients on an HDD which failed. No clicking sounds could be heard from the failed HDD. However, the HDD could not be detected by any Windows or Mac OS computer.
In a phone diagnosis, it was possible to determine that the series of HDD was a Seagate ‘DM001 Grenada’ disk. These are well known in the data recovery industry as a result of the relatively high failure rate and challenging recoveries. Our Seagate DM001 series case study provides information on this. A fixed price quotation was provided based on the suspected fault with the HDD.
Hard disk drive details:
Manufacturer: Seagate
Model: ST2000DM001 / 1CH164-302
Printed Circuit Board: 100687658 REV C
Result:
The HDD had a failure of the firmware. The disk would not initialise fully and would be stuck in a ‘busy’ state. It was not possible to read any data from the HDD, and the HDD would not respond to any commands via the SATA interface.
It was necessary to alter the ‘Saved Mode Pages’ via the terminal connection within PC3000. After this, it was possible to get some access to the HDD and the data. However, read speeds were poor. This was due to a more complicated failure with another module of the firmware, referred to the ‘media cache’. After extensive alterations to the firmware, it was possible to allow the HDD to enter a stable read mode. It took approximately four complete days of disk imaging to recover the data.
Of the 1200GB of data stored on the HDD, it was possible to recover all but 2.5GB of data OK. A full recovery of the critical data was made. The 2.5GB of corrupt files were not of significance to the customer. CDR provided an opportunity to the customer to check that the data they required had been recovered via our File List Viewer software. The customer left a review on the CDR Google Business listing for the work completed.