My Seagate 1.5TB drive just died - any hope of restoring data?

J

JaYp146

Supreme [H]ardness
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Apr 24, 2005
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Hey guys,

My backup external drive (a Seagate 1.5TB 7200.1 with the newest firmware) has gone from slow to not working. I tried Scandisk and watched it fail.

It was a backup of my main system as well as auxiliary storage. Windows sees the drive but cannot read from it.

Is there ANY software out there that will allow me to recover some of the lost data?
 
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If it was just a bunch of bad sectors then yeah. But if it flat out doesn't work then I doubt it. When it started to slow down, did you suspect it was dying? Should have taken everything off it and gotten a new drive while you could have.
 
It started to slow down to the point where I couldn't even view thumbnails of pictures. I couldn't recover anything in time.

I've heard of people sticking a hard drive in the freezer overnight and then trying to recover data ... is that worth a shot? At this point I'm ready to try about anything.

EDIT - I can feel it vibrating, it powers up.
 
Shouldn't have put anything on it that you weren't also storing elsewhere to begin with, but that's water under the bridge. :p I've heard that a ton of times as well, never tried it myself. Out of the two or three drives I've had that died completely on me I think at 'least two would either not power up at all or it died so suddenly after mis-behaving that it was obviously toast. Worth a shot tho, can't see how it'd hurt (since I remember 'they' even recommend doing it multiple times as necessary).
 
Try running HDD regenerator or spinrite

If the drive is spinning up then its prob just bad sectors.

Also what does Seatools tell you?
 
I stuck it in the freezer at 5 AM this morning before trying HDD Regenerator or Spinrite. I'll try those after attempting data recovery tomorrow.

And ty for the input, guys. Thankfully I'm losing mostly backups ... but I had run out of space on my main 1TB drive a few months back, so this 1.5TB drive also contains some things I would REALLY like to hold on to .. in 6 years of being in front of a computer for at least 3 hours a day, this is the first and only time I've ever had a HDD die before my eyes. Very helpless feeling.
 
JaYp146 said:
I stuck it in the freezer at 5 AM this morning before trying HDD Regenerator or Spinrite. I'll try those after attempting data recovery tomorrow.

And ty for the input, guys. Thankfully I'm losing mostly backups ... but I had run out of space on my main 1TB drive a few months back, so this 1.5TB drive also contains some things I would REALLY like to hold on to .. in 6 years of being in front of a computer for at least 3 hours a day, this is the first and only time I've ever had a HDD die before my eyes. Very helpless feeling.
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Did you put it in a anti static bag?
did you use a silica gel packet?

Also i dont think that will help your issue, but i guess its worth a shot.
 
The refrigerator trick worked for me a couple times, but I believe the drive was giving me "I/O Error" when accessing it via Windows. I was able to copy most of the data, than it would usually fail again. Whenever it was bad sectors, it wouldn´t make any difference at all.

Hope you get lucky:D
 
leonemesis said:
The refrigerator trick worked for me a couple times, but I believe the drive was giving me "I/O Error" when accessing it via Windows. I was able to copy most of the data, than it would usually fail again. Whenever it was bad sectors, it wouldn´t make any difference at all.

Hope you get lucky:D
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That's exactly what I got - an I/O error.

To those that asked, the drive is in an external enclosure, sealed in an anti-static bag and in an airtight ziploc bag. I just added a packet of silica gel to the bag (knew there was a good reason to save those).

If worse comes to worse, my trigger finger is eyeing both Spinrite and HDD Regenerator.
 
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If you are out of space on your other drives, then what do you plan to do if you can get this drive to work? Better start clearing space now.
 
the same happened to me once with my external HDD when I kicked it. I had two partitions for it; I formatted one of those, and it started working. As for the data recovery... I only know of stellar data recovery.
 
J-Will said:
If you are out of space on your other drives, then what do you plan to do if you can get this drive to work? Better start clearing space now.
Click to expand...

I have a 500GB WD drive that I just installed in my laptop a few days ago. That is where the data will be going.

Also - thank you, Captain Obvious.
 
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You only mentioned you were out of space, so I was providing you with insight you might not of thought about yet in your frenzy/ panic to reclaim your data.

so, you are welcome

JaYp146 said:
I have a 500GB WD drive that I just installed in my laptop a few days ago. That is where the data will be going.

Also - thank you, Captain Obvious.
Click to expand...
 
Hey there. I can feel your pain. Actually I've just lost a single file worth of 2000 euro. Pretty dumb of me not to backit up, heh.

Here's what I do when dealing with such stuff.


First of all, do not "use" the drive, as in connecting it to your system and browsing the drive or anything.

Get GRC's Spinrite software and run the basic, "level 1" scan. That will tell you if the drive is completely dead or recoverable. If the scan stops on a block for more than, let's say, 10-20 minutes then your drive can be binned straight away. Or you can take it to a professional data recovery lab. That is costly though.

If your "level 1" scan goes thru fairly quickly then try "level 4". That will mark all the bad sectors as an unusable space.

After that, immediately launch your windows and copy all the data to another drive. Then if you can see or feel that not all of your data has been copied, try some of the data recovery software. Like: "recover My Files" - very good piece here, Kernel's hd data recovery, "Get Data Back" ... or similar.

Best of luck getting your stuff back.

Lucas

EDIT: Do your recovery with the drive connected to your mobo. Never attempt to do so with an external enclosure.
 
And just to throw it out there, also try GetDataBack to recover some of your data.
 
veldi said:
Hey there. I can feel your pain. Actually I've just lost a single file worth of 2000 euro. Pretty dumb of me not to backit up, heh.

Here's what I do when dealing with such stuff.


First of all, do not "use" the drive, as in connecting it to your system and browsing the drive or anything.

Get GRC's Spinrite software and run the basic, "level 1" scan. That will tell you if the drive is completely dead or recoverable. If the scan stops on a block for more than, let's say, 10-20 minutes then your drive can be binned straight away. Or you can take it to a professional data recovery lab. That is costly though.

If your "level 1" scan goes thru fairly quickly then try "level 4". That will mark all the bad sectors as an unusable space.

After that, immediately launch your windows and copy all the data to another drive. Then if you can see or feel that not all of your data has been copied, try some of the data recovery software. Like: "recover My Files" - very good piece here, Kernel's hd data recovery, "Get Data Back" ... or similar.

Best of luck getting your stuff back.

Lucas

EDIT: Do your recovery with the drive connected to your mobo. Never attempt to do so with an external enclosure.
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Well, the last time I had the drive connected via eSATA, Windows 7 wouldn't boot - it would stall trying to read from the drive. Any reason to believe it wouldn't do the same in this instance?

It will be tremendously easier to do this from an external enclosure (which the drive is inside of right now while in the freezer) ... my laptop could "see" it while USB connected, but was unable to read any data from the disk.

It looks like my plan of attack will be to remove the drive from the freezer tomorrow morning, plug it in to the laptop, see if anything's recoverable. If so, transfer what I need to. If that doesn't work, run Spinrite, HDD Regenerator, and GetDataBack. I normally prefer free software, but in this instance, I'll be dropping coin on Spinrite and HDD Regenerator ... who knows, might need them again some day.

Also, many thanks to those who have contributed ideas to this thread.
 
Quick update - the freezer trick worked, I am currently transferring about 15GB's worth of data. Looks like I'll be able to get all the crucial stuff off the drive onto my laptop's HDD. :)

30 minutes in and it's still going. Drive's at about room temperature. All crucial data is off the drive.

Ran HDD Regenerator at about the 40 minute mark. Drive is no longer detected by Windows 7 in My Computer, but will show up as an "unallocated" drive in the Computer Management utility (under Disk Management).

Looks like HDD Regen is going to take a while - it took about 24 minutes to complete 1% of the overall process. I'm afraid to turn the drive off (for fear of it not starting up again) and connect it via SATA or eSATA, as I couldn't even boot to Windows while it was connected to my desktop.
 
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Well, the last time I had the drive connected via eSATA, Windows 7 wouldn't boot - it would stall trying to read from the drive. Any reason to believe it wouldn't do the same in this instance?
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The structure of the drive was harmed and Windows hasn't been able to verify the drive.

Try to plug it in while windows is running, like hotplugging it.

Glad that the freezer worked.

I think you should first run Spinrite and then HDD regen. Spirite goes on on the hardware level.

The thing with using your external enclosure is a big problem here as we're not sure the interface used is 100% transparent. Do yourself a favor and use either sata or esata. This way you will eliminate any "translators" between the hd and your hardware. It's like translating languages, stuff gets lost in between.

Please do connect it via sata preferably and run spirite first. If that takes very long then I'm afraid your drive can be binned :(

Best of luck!

Lucas



EDIT: I've recovered my own file, hihi. Great success!
 
Thanks for the advice, veldi. I'm 10.5% of the way through HDD Regenerator without any luck, so I think I will try connecting it via eSATA while my desktop is running. I have ACHI enabled, so hot plugging should work just fine.

Will update this post accordingly.

EDIT - as soon as I closed HDD Regenerator, the drive's data is once again accessible. Sweet.

EDIT - restarting, booting into Spinrite to see if that makes a difference.
 
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Right, get Spirite thru and let's see what happens.

Always use native connection without any middle interfaces while restoring a drive. If the spinrite goes thru fairly quickly then there's no need for HDD regenerator.

Try to recover files right after Spinrite is finished.


Luc
 
Should I let it keep trying to "discover mass storage devices"? It's been stuck there for about 45 minutes now. It's attempting to detect a 1TB and 1.5TB drive, so maybe because of that it takes longer?
 
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When I used the freezer method, it was...
40 minutes freeze
10 minutes copy data off
40 minutes freeze
10 minutes copy data off...
warmups would make files invisible
 
Okay, well:

Spinrite was frozen on "Discovering Mass Storage Devices" for more than an hour. I gave up, booted into Windows, and the "dead" Seagate was detected (and still is). All its data is accessible.

Ran HDD Regenerator overnight - 0 bad sectors found.

The drive is working just fine, like nothing's wrong ...

Here is the SMART report from Speedfan:

34ni921.png


The "Power On Hours Count" seems a bit low.

Question being - where do I go from here? Is it still possible to send the drive in for RMA (even though it's seems to be working again)?
 
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Probably not anymore because seagate will want to see from seatools that its actually not working.

If HDD regenerator worked, then i would say you are fine for now.
I would wonder though if there was some other factor that caused it in the first place. So i would check the SMART data occasionally just to be safe.
 
Sooo the freezer trick worked on a drive that was connected by USB.....Spinrite was frozen on "Discovering Mass Storage Devices" for more than an hour on a working drive....and now the drive tests fine?

I'm glad you got your data recovered and it just goes to show that not everything works the way we think it should.
 
Reallocated sector count == 0 is GOOD...
Unless it was more than zero and spinrite fixed that???
 
Old Hippie said:
Sooo the freezer trick worked on a drive that was connected by USB.....Spinrite was frozen on "Discovering Mass Storage Devices" for more than an hour on a working drive....and now the drive tests fine?

I'm glad you got your data recovered and it just goes to show that not everything works the way we think it should.
Click to expand...

It was Discovering Mass Storage Devices for an hour ... it never showed any progress. Spinrite never said "your drive is error free" or any sort of indicator that it was finished.

Regardless, I restarted, booted back into Windows, ran HDD Regenerator, no errors detected.

And to those that have braved this thread and helped me through this process - my sincere thanks.
 
My gist was that the troublesome drive acted differently than I would have expected.

You recovered via USB when it's normally better connected directly and I wouldn't have expected Spinrite to freeze on an operational drive.

And now the drive passes SMART.

Hence..
it just goes to show that not everything works the way we think it should
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.

To tell ya the truth, I'd be afraid that it would do it again.

Good Luck!
 
Yeah, same here. From now on I'm going to be VERY cautious about using this drive for anything remotely important. Also motivates me to better organize how I back up my files.

Oh, sorry if it wasn't clear, but the drive was connected via eSATA (per veldi's suggestion) for both the SpinRite and HDD Regenerator tests.
 
nitrobass24 said:
Probably not anymore because seagate will want to see from seatools that its actually not working.
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He can still RMA his disk. Seagate doesn't require approval for RMAs. As long as the disk is still under warranty according to the Seagate website he is ok.

Seagate has stated that a large fraction of the disks RMA'd to them are in perfect working order. It's expected. There is a warning that Seagate reserves the right to treat the RMA of a good disk as fraud but I take that with a grain of salt. If a disk was not operating properly in the past but is operating fine at the moment it is still defective. It's an intermittent problem.
 
kristof said:
He can still RMA his disk. Seagate doesn't require approval for RMAs. As long as the disk is still under warranty according to the Seagate website he is ok.

Seagate has stated that a large fraction of the disks RMA'd to them are in perfect working order. It's expected. There is a warning that Seagate reserves the right to treat the RMA of a good disk as fraud but I take that with a grain of salt. If a disk was not operating properly in the past but is operating fine at the moment it is still defective. It's an intermittent problem.
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In order to submit an RMA you have to enter a code that Seatools provides.
Ive RMAd plenty of disks.

Product Return Process
Did you know 1 out of 5 disk drives returned to Seagate is actually good? The sad part of this fact is that the owners of these healthy drives have unnecessarily forfeited their data. Seagate will help you to determine the true health of your disk drive.

The following steps should be followed if you have a faulty drive and need to return it.



Step 1 - Diagnose the Problem
Test your Seagate drive with SeaTools. This software will test your drive to determine if it qualifies as a failed product. If so, SeaTools will issue a special code called a SeaTools Test Code. SeaTools supports both internal and external products and will offer to repair your drive in certain situations. Follow the SeaTools instructions if there is a drive failure. SeaTools will either link to the RMA form below or recommend that you return to this page to enter the numbers manually.

Seagate reserves the right to return a non-faulty drive back to its owner and to charge for all associated shipping costs.


Step 2 - Complete the Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA)
After SeaTools has identified a drive failure, please start the RMA process by selecting the Begin RMA button below. This step will also validate that your product is still under warranty. Please have the following information ready:

Model Number

Serial Number

SeaTools Test Code (from the First Step) (Help! I have no Seatools Test Code )
Click to expand...

Why dont you get your facts straight, before running your mouth.
 
nitrobass24 said:
In order to submit an RMA you have to enter a code that Seatools provides.
Ive RMAd plenty of disks.

Why dont you get your facts straight, before running your mouth.
Click to expand...

Way to fly off the handle over disk RMAs. :rolleyes:

I was speaking from my own experience. I've never had to supply a Seatools code, ever.

I just RMA'd a Seagate two months ago. I didn't have to supply a Seatools code. Same for the other 1/2 dozen Seagate disks I've RMA'd over the past couple years.

EDIT:

I have a couple Seagate's sitting here on my desk waiting for RMA so I went to the website and started one. There was a box asking for a Seatools code along with the serial, model, and captcha. I canceled and then logged in to find the date of my last RMA. When I went back to the RMA page after signing-in the box asking for a Seatools code was gone. There's no mention of Seatools at all.

I have no clue what the requirements are for skipping Seatools codes. All I know is that when I am signed-in Seagate doesn't ask me for one.

Maybe other people with Seagate accounts can comment.
 
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Glad it worked mate.

I can remember the first time I heard about the freezer trick, I LOL´d so hard thinking it was some kind of prank, and never thought it would actually work.

Well, it doesn´t really matter what we do as long we get our precious pr0n back! :D
 
Could you re-iterate how long you left it in the freezer, etc.? For the benefit of people that might be employing the same trick in the future... ;) Glad to hear it worked tho, guess there's a good reason that tip has been making the rounds as long as it has.
 
The freezer trick works. I've recovered data before using this method. Operating the drive while in the freezer (in an airtight bag) is the best bet.... just run a long SATA cable. In fact, I was even able to unstick the platters of one inoperable drive enough as to where it still is miraculously in operation today... some five years later.

As far as Seagate's warranty returns, I've returned three drives recently without ever using Seatools. Just make sure the drives are packed and shipped in a decent enough manner; otherwise, your drive might be refused.
 
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