This hard drive was out of a customers Macbook Pro. As you can see in the image, loss of data caused by a severe head crash. Another good reason why Mac users should make sure they back up regularly.
ST9320421ASG Head Crash
HP Smart Array E200i SaS Drive
We have just competed a successful recovery from an HP Smart Array E200i RAID array. Not a standard case this. It had x3 DG146BB976 2.5″ SaS drives, two of which had been overwritten with a new RAID 1 mirror.
We found the disk order which was not the same as the labelled numbers. This is often the case. Also, due to the rebuild that had occurred we had to drop one of the disks and virtually rebuild it using the parity information from the other disks.
3 DG146BB976 / ST9146802SS SaS Drives
This Seagate ST31000333AS 1TB drive suffered a head crash resulting in severe media damage. The contamination caused by the damage can be seen on the disc surface as well as the internal filter. The filter is usually white but is now silver metallic in colour as a result of the contamination. The customer did not have any indication that this was going to happen.
Seagate Head Crash ST31000333AS
Seagate ST31000333AS Filter
Last week we wrote about the Thai floods affecting hard drive manufacturer Western Digital. It now appears that the floods are causing problems for Seagate. Although not directly affecting their own manufacturing plants, the floods are causing problems in the supply chain, which could cause delays and shortages getting their drives to market.
Inside a broken hard drive today we came across some of the most damaged read / write heads we have ever seen. Below is an example of how the heads should look. Notice how straight they are at the ends.
Good Seagate Heads
Then below are the damaged heads. They are at 90 degrees to the discs (tomb stoning) and would have been scraping the inner disc surfaces to pieces. Bad times!
Bad Seagate Heads
We at Dataquest have been aware of the problem with 1TB Seagate drives for some time. It is pleasing to see that Apple are also recognising the problem and are offering their customers a free swap out. These drives are mainly seen in iMacs, but you may also get them in the Mac Pro so make sure your back ups are up to date.
Dataquest’s specialist data recovery services incorporated in Novatech’s bespoke IT & Telecomms hardware solutions. Novatech can now offer their customers the complete worry free IT Solution. In partnership with Novatech, Dataquest will provide their customers with 24/7 Data Recovery support.
We are still seeing these drives failing even after nearly 4 years. This just shows that there is no specific time stamp when these drives are going to fail. So anyone out there who still owns a original mac book with its original drive needs to make sure a regular back up is in place.
A new 3TB drive is looming on the horizon, yet this may not be the breakthrough it seems. There appears to be major problems in the way older versions of Windows handle drives above 2.1TB. Windows XP and below will be unable to make use of these drives in any meaningful way, with some reports suggesting that only 990MB of usable capacity would be available to these vintage operating systems. It sounds like one more nail in XP’s coffin. If you need this mountain of storage it seems like it’s time to ditch XP already!
We have received two of these failed drives recently in succession. Further clean room examination has confirmed that the spindle stack has detached itself from the motor base and coil. When first handling the drive it becomes quite obvious that this has happened as you can actually feel the pack rattling. Surprisingly we cannot see any physical damage on the media or contamination and fortunately the clamp has kept the pack secure. We would not recommend spinning the drive up in this condition. The only rework available is to transfer the pack into a good Seagate donor as part of the recovery process. Pack alignment is a critical part of this process.