Dataquest

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Tag: Hard Drive

  • The Worst Head Crash Ever?

    The Worst Head Crash Ever?

    I’ve seen some pretty serious head crashes in my time. The worst part of my job is knowing I’ll have to tell someone their data is gone forever. Sometimes media damage can be subtle enough that it’s impossible difficult to even detect by eye. Other times the damage is obvious. Today was one of the clearest I’ve ever seen. What’s worse is that we got two of these identical disks from the same Mac Pro, with identical damage. You have to see it to believe it…
    Worst Head Crash Ever?
    Worst Head Crash Ever?
    It’s difficult to know how long these damaged disks were left spinning, but it looks like months! If you look closely, you can see that the centre of the disk is worn right through. That black dust everywhere was once the shiny disk surface that stored the data. Nobody in the world can recover data from disk dust.
    The easiest way to avoid such serious damage is to power off your hard drive as soon as you hear clicking. If we got these disks sooner it’s possible we could have recovered them.
  • Seagate Barracuda Ramp Weakness

    Seagate Barracuda Ramp Weakness

    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.

    Seagate Barracuda Head Ramps
    Seagate Barracuda Head Ramps (left is damaged)

    More Problems With Seagate Drives

    These ramp problems are the latest in a long line of faults for Seagate.

    Disk Info

     Failed DiskFailed Disk 2025Working Disk
    Model NumberST3000DM001ST3000DM001ST3000DM001
    PN1CH166-306ICH166-0481CH166-302
    FWCC29AP19CC26
    Date143541530413407
    Site CodeTKTKTK

    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.

  • Top 3 Coffees in Portsmouth

    Top 3 Coffees in Portsmouth

    It’s probably worth a quick explanation here. Why is this data recovery blog so interested in coffee? Well personally I love coffee, but I also often recover data from hard drives that have been for a drink (or a swim). So there’s my excuse, now back to the coffee!

    Fortunately for caffeine addicts in Portsmouth like me, there are plenty of places to get your fix. I’m the sort of person that finds somewhere I like, and then just keeps going back there forever. Sometimes though, it’s worth having a look at the other options. My current top three places for coffee in Portsmouth are below in no particular order. I’ve chosen three, but I’m always happy to try more places so let me know if you’d like me to give your coffee a try!

    Portsmouth Coffee

    Coffee#1

    Coffee#1 is a small chain of coffee shops spreading like wildfire from Wales, across the South West, all the way down to the South Coast of England. The local branch is in Palmerston Road, Southsea. They do great snacks, cakes & lunches (Sausage & Relish roll anyone?) I usually go for whatever single-origin coffee they have in, and I’m never disappointed. They also have beans & equipment for sale. I recommend the Brazillian beans if you can get them. They are my current favourite for grinding & Aeropressing at home. Visit the Coffee#1 Website

    Home Coffee

    I’ve only just found out about this place, but I’m so glad I did. I recently went for lunch here & had a big granary doorstep sandwich, an Americano, & an iced ring doughnut. I couldn’t have been happier with all those things.  The cosy shop on Albert Road is just a few steps away from the Kings Theatre, but they are set to open a new store on Cosham High Street, much closer to home for me! They have lots of info about their coffees on the blackboards and are more than happy to have a chat with you about brewing at home. They sell kit & beans too which is handy, although I’ve not tried the beans myself yet.(Update – The beans are great!) Home Coffee is now closed ☹️

    Soprano’s

    A bit of a wildcard entry here, and also a hearty recommendation if you like quality fresh Italian food. The Peroni on-tap is always delicious, and their after-dinner coffees are the perfect way to finish a meal. Booking is advised as the cosy restaurant is always bustling with customers whenever I’ve been there. Visit the Soprano’s Wesbite

    So there you have my top three coffees in Portsmouth. If you’ve spilled coffee, or any other drink on your hard drive or computer, get in touch. We can help recover the data, and you can tell me if the coffee you spilled was any good!

  • What Is A Clean Room

    Some parts of our data recovery process require us to open a hard drive for internal repairs.

    John In Cleanroom

    We have a walk in clean room area on site, that allows us to carry out the necessary rework. It consists of an overhead air shower unit with a sealed enclosure that cleans and circulates the air within a specified tolerance. To keep particles to a minimum we wear a gown, gloves, and face mask to prevent contamination from outside.

    All hard drives are built in a clean room environment. Keeping small air particles out is crucial due the the complexity of the internal mechanism and tiny tolerance between the moving mechanical parts and internal disc surface that holds your data. When a hard drive requires any internal repair, it is critical that this work is carried out in a clean room.

    See our video about why you should never open a hard drive without a cleanroom.

  • Another Successful Dropped Hard Drive Recovery

    Another Successful Dropped Hard Drive Recovery

    Last week I was working on another dropped hard drive recovery sent into us by one of our Data Recovery Partners. I immediately took the hard drive into our clean room and removed the top cover for internal inspection. Although the hard drive had been dropped there were no visible signs of physical media damage. I replaced the damaged internal heads, rebuilt the hard drive and successfully recovered the data for the customer and Partner.

    Thankfully the partner had advised the customer to stop trying to access the hard drive as described in our blog. When they received the hard drive from the customer.  They sent it straight to us, without attempting anything themselves.
    These actions by the customer and partner were critical in the eventual successful outcome.

  • This drive has a hardware problem that can’t be repaired

    This drive has a hardware problem that can’t be repaired. Back up as much of the data as possible and replace the disk. See an authorised Apple dealer for more information.
    S.M.A.R.T. Status : Failing

    If you see the message above, your hard disk or SSD has started to fail and has reported faults to the Mac. If caught early enough, these disks can usually be recovered. You can try to copy important data to another disk but if the copy process gets stuck for a while, it’s safer to stop. If you leave a failing disk in that state it can deteriorate until the disk is ruined.

    If the data is really important, and you’d rather not take the risk, you could have a look at our Mac Data Recovery Services. We have been dealing with these sorts of problems for years and have a developed a really safe way to get the data off in good condition.

    This drive has a hardware problem that can't be repaired

    Whatever you decide to do, don’t ignore this message. The broken disk cannot repair itself, and will only get worse. In many cases, the disk won’t even be readable by the time you see this warning.

    It doesn’t matter if the disk is still inside your iMac or MacBook, we can remove it for you, and even replace the drive at the end of the recovery process if you want. Ask about our Mac Setup service if you are interested.

    Contact Us Now…

    For a fast reply from a real person.

  • Successful 8 Disk RAID Recovery

    This was a RAID recovery with a challenge. The customer could only find seven of the eight disks from the RAID and two of them were not accessible. To make the challenge even more difficult, the customer did not the RAID level or any of the configuration. All we knew was the disks were from an old Dell Server.

    The RAID Recovery

    We first managed to overcome the failed disks and imaged all disks to our server. Once complete we analysed all of the images to determine the RAID settings and configuration. We found two different RAID’s with completely separate configurations. We used the settings to create virtual copies of the RAIDs and were able to carry out a successful recovery from both RAID Volumes.

    The client was gobsmacked by the outcome. You can see his comment below:

    DataQuest are amazing, we sent 7 HDD’s in a unknown raid configuration and with a failed hard drive, they managed to recover all the information we needed and more! I believed it was an impossible task, but obviously these guys know their stuff and are miracle workers! I thank the team at DataQuest and would recommend them to anyone! – Matt Bayley – February 29, 2016

    We had a very satisfied customer as well as very satisfied RAID recovery Engineer. Well Done Dan, give yourself a pat on the back.

  • Flood and Water Damaged Hard Drives

    Flood and Water Damaged Hard Drives

    With the recent floods in the United Kingdom, it is important to know that time can be a critical factor when trying to recover data from mechanical hard drives that have been submerged or damaged by water. Most mechanical hard drives have breather holes that may allow water to enter the hard drive enclosure if submerged. If this is the case then the longer the hard drive is left in this condition the worse the internal damage. Even if the hard drive is left to dry out, internally the damage has already been done. Our advice is not to try this if the data is critical to you or your business.

    Any water damage hard drives that we receive go straight into our clean room environment to be dismantled and dried out internally. The hard drives external electronics would also require a cleaning process to prevent any electrical shorting caused by the water residue.

    Although Solid Sate Hard Drives ( SSD ) do not have any mechanical moving parts, they are still prone to damage to the data chips and electronics by residue left by the water. Very much as mechanical hard drives they would require dismantling and specialist cleaning to ensure no electrical shorting of components.

  • Hard Drive Encryption Data Recovery

    Hard Drive Encryption Data Recovery

    Encrypted hard drives come in many forms. They can be created by the hard drive manufacturer as part of the hard drives firmware or as a third party software add on such as Symantec PGP or Microsofts Bitlocker.

    Hard drive Encryption is becoming much more common especially in many large enterprise companies. Some hard drive encryption is more sophisticated than others, but in many data recovery cases we receive, a common flaw is the inability of the encryption software to overcome bad sectors on a hard drive. In most cases it results in partial or no access to the decrypted data on the hard drive by the user or even their I.T dept.

    We have created an image and decryption process that allows us to recover the users data with the original file and folder structure intact. The time it takes to carry out this process will depending on the level of hard drive encryption used.

  • Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM & ST1000DM Problems

    Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM & ST1000DM Problems
    Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM & ST1000DM Problems

    This year we have seen a fair number of these particular model hard drives with internal media damage caused by a head crash. These are 3.5″ hard drives from external cases such as Seagate Freeagent Go-Flex and Seagate Expansion Desktop. They are also used as internal hard drives in PCs running Windows 7 & 8 also used in Apple iMac’s running OSX.

    It has been difficult to confirm whether the media damage seen has been caused by an impact such as a dropped drive or from general electronic failure. What we do know is that as soon as you hear one of these hard drives start to click, then if you have not already got a backup in place, backup your data immediately.

    On an Apple Mac running OSX the first sign of a problem is usually a spinning beach ball resulting in slow access. On a PC running Windows 7 & 8, the signs of a hard drive problem are once again slow access and lack of movement from the mouse icon.

    If you have a problem with a Seagate hard drive, have a look at our Seagate Data Recovery Services. If we catch it early enough we should be able to recover the data!