During a recent RAID 5 recovery attempt, John made an interesting discovery inside the two failed disks. The plastic ramp that the heads park onto when idle had snapped in the same position on both drives. We don’t know if the heads got damaged first, and then broke the ramps during parking, or if the ramps broke first, damaging the heads as they parked. The client told us the disks were not dropped or jolted. Whatever the cause, both disks had scratches to the delicate magnetic surfaces. In this case, two failed disks from a four disk RAID 5 means the data recovery is not possible.
Old vs New
The other two disks in the RAID had different firmware and don’t show the same fault. We don’t know if these disks have the other (older?) more robust ramp system that we’ve seen in similar disks.
More Problems With Seagate Drives
These ramp problems are the latest in a long line of faults for Seagate.
Disk Info
| Failed Disk | Failed Disk 2025 | Working Disk | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model Number | ST3000DM001 | ST3000DM001 | ST3000DM001 |
| PN | 1CH166-306 | ICH166-048 | 1CH166-302 |
| FW | CC29 | AP19 | CC26 |
| Date | 14354 | 15304 | 13407 |
| Site Code | TK | TK | TK |
Interestingly, the surviving disks in this RAID array were dated 2013, and the failed disks 2014. I would have expected the older disks to fail first.
Update 2021
This post was linked on Hacker News, and has some interesting comments – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27781146
Update 2025
We just received another of these disks from an iMac with the dreaded snapped parking ramp. This was part of a Fusion Drive. Despite the relatively minor looking crack, it caused severe enough physical damage to the discs to prevent recovery. Interesting that the crack matches the same position as the original 2016 photo above.
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