Initial Drive Information Model ST8000AS0002
Customer dropped off two ST8000AS0002 HDD’s for recovery both are 8Tb Seagate Backup Plus
- Model: SR00F2
- P/N: 1KBAPA-500
- Internal Drive Models: ST8000AS0002
- Internal P/N: 1NA17Z-568
- FW: AR13
- Site: TK
- Date: 15291
- Serial #’s: Z840….. & Z840….
Customer describes that the two drives both stopped working, HDD #1 which is more critical and contains more data was dropped and no longer is spinning or recognized by the computer. HDD #2 is described as having suddenly stopped working entirely but is still spinning up normally and is recognized by the computer as connected. Both drives are HFS+ (Macintosh) formatted and contain videography work, 4K video clips. Drives are SMR (shingled magnetic recording) archive type drives, and likely not well suited to video editing work.
Initial Diagnostics
HDD 1 Opened in clean room and checked for condition. Drive is discovered to have become head stuck after trauma of being dropped while operating. Read/write heads (12 in total) are relatively near to parking ramp and appear to be in good physical condition, likely can be salvaged. Recommend un-stick very carefully and then test to see if read/write heads are still viable for data extraction.
Customer quoted $650 + Parts (if purchase becomes necessary) for recovery.
HDD 2 Tested on PC-3000 station for basic functionality. HDD properly identifies, shows correct capacity, and has sector access. S.M.A.R.T. information shows zero errors. Short random read test performed and drive appears to be reading data normally. Issue is likely logical in nature as the hardware checks out 100%.
Customer quoted $300 flat for logical recovery.
HDD #1 Data Recovery ST8000AS0002
After receiving approval for recovery from this drive, drive is opened in clean room again and read/write heads are carefully lifted and re-positioned onto parking ramps off of platter. Read/write heads then further inspected under microscope to check for damage or mutilation. Physically read/write heads appear to be in good condition. Drive is then closed up and ready for initialization.
Drive is then checked on PC-3000 for functionality. Given how new this drive is no utility exists for PC-3000 or any other data recovery system. Terminal is also locked out on this model and SA is encrypted, so no firmware operations to stabilize the drive will be possible. On initial power-up HDD properly identifies and shows correct capacity. Audible sound gives no indication for auto-reallocation events or other pending/busy firmware issues causing destabilization. Imaging task created to clone data onto another drive. Read/write heads are individually tested for functionality and all twelve are found to be 100% functioning. The clean room procedure was a complete success.
Drive is found to have about 3.8TB of data stored on it. Only a few bad sectors are found on the drive and they are not in areas which contain any actual data. 100% of the data was recovered.
Total Cost to Customer: $650
HDD #2 Data Recovery ST8000AS0002
Hard drive file system is analyzed in Data Extractor software. Based on the HFS+ catalog there is only approximately 200Gb of data on the drive. Other areas of the drive are spot checked and confirmed to be unused space which is blank. Task is created to image based on used sectors from HFS+ information.
Data is 100% imaged. After this the HFS+ is logically examined to determine cause of data loss. It appears that the catalog file had at some point become corrupted and wasn’t able to mount on a Macintosh system any longer. Also a directory containing the bulk of the user data was moved into the hidden “trashes” directory, likely due to an attempt by the OS to repair the volume. Data is then extracted from the imaged data onto a new HFS+ formatted HDD, and the data lost from the file system “repair” is moved back to it’s proper place in the root directory.
Total Cost to Customer: $300
