Seagate ST5000DM000 Recovery -Drive not responsive

May 16, 2022March 18, 2022 by Aaron Hook

This 5TB Seagate ST5000DM000 recovery came from a customer in Idaho. They had already tried to have the hard drive recovered at a few different data recovery shops closer to them, but none of them had been successful in getting the data off the drive. The hard drive was reported to spin up and sound good, but the computer would not recognize it at all. It would not mount on the desktop or even show up in any utilities. Seagate ST5000DM000 Recovery The client has actually been in the tech industry for many years (there is a lot of tech in Idaho, believe it or not), so they were comfortable explaining what the issue was with the ST5000DM000 hard drive and what the other shops had said they thought the problem might be. It sounded to me like it could possibly be some more advanced firmware issue, which is something a lot of shops are not able to handle as it takes a lot of experience to know how to fix some of the odder … Read more

Seagate ST9500325AS Suddenly Stops Working

May 12, 2022March 7, 2022 by Aaron Hook

Seagate Momentus 500GB not working drive

This 500B Seagate ST9500325AS recovery project came from a local client that reported the drive just stopped working one day out of the blue. The hard drive was in a computer, so the whole computer just stopped booting fully. Recovering A Seagate Drive With Bad Heads The client took the computer into a computer repair shop and was told the issue was with the hard drive itself. The shop that looked at the drive did not have the tools and experience needed to recover the drive on their own, so they recommended the customer contact us for our affordable data recovery service. Ticking sound then spinning down When the client contacted us, they let us know the Seagate ST9500325AS drive was making a ticking sound, then spinning down. This is very classic on a Seagate of a bad head situation, so I was not surprised when I inspected the drive and found that head 0 and head 3 were both bad. Because this drive has 4 heads, I was able to use Head 1 and Head … Read more

Seagate Rosewood ST2000LM007 Recovery

May 12, 2022March 4, 2022 by Aaron Hook

Seagate Mobile 2TB Rosewood that is not showing up on computer

This Seagate Rosewood series drive was mailed to us by a customer that reported the drive was not showing up on their computer when they plugged it in. The Rosewood series drives are very popular and are found in the popular Seagate external drives. The most common models we see are the ST2000LM007 like this drive and the ST1000LM035. If you need affordable data recovery for your Rosewood drive, we can help! Seagate Rosewood Recovery Once the drive arrived, I started with an inspection of the ST2000LM007 2TB mobile HDD and everything looked good physically with the drive. When I plugged the drive into my PC-3000 recovery rig I heard it spin up and everything sounded good as well. I moved on to checking the firmware as this particular Rosewood series of Seagate drives seem to be prone to firmware issues. Patch and Unlock This is a Seagate Rosewood drive, so it is necessary to patch and unlock the terminal before having access to the firmware of the drive. When these drives first came out, … Read more

Beeping Seagate Rosewood Drive Recovery

May 12, 2022February 25, 2022 by Aaron Hook

Mobile Seagate HDD 2TB Drive that was accidentally formatted

This 2TB ST2000LM007 Seagate Rosewood drive was reported as making a beeping sound when plugged in. The beeping Seagate came to us from a client in El Dorado, KS, who is a professional photographer. The most common requests for important data are photos and work documents. In this case, the professional photos on the drive checked off both the photo and business document boxes! As a small business owner, I understand how important it is to get your business data back safe and sound (and sometimes quickly). Beeping Seagate Recovery While El Dorado isn’t too far away from our Kansas based recovery lab, the client opted to mail in the drive for recovery rather than make the drive. The carrier made quick work of delivering the drive and I started by opening the drive up to check the heads in my cleanroom environment. We get drives from all over the country through our mail-in program, so if you are too far away to drop off, don’t worry! We can help. Heads stuck on platter As … Read more

Dead Seagate ST9500325AS Bad Heads Recovery

May 12, 2022February 16, 2022 by Aaron Hook

500GB Seagate Mobile Drive with 1 bad head

This Seagate ST9500325AS 500GB drive used to be a popular model that you would find in a lot of Windows-based laptops. This particular hard drive came in from a customer that said their drive just stopped working suddenly, and now no computer would recognize it at all. The customer even tried bringing it into a computer repair shop to see if they could get the drive to mount and recover some of his important data. Seagate ST9500325AS Recovery The shop they brought this ST9500325AS hard drive to said they could not access anything on the drive at all. The drive wasn’t making abnormal noises, but their data recovery equipment would just not recognize the hard drive at all. The shop recommended that they send the hard drive to us for recovery as we have had good success recovering drives for them in the past at an affordable rate. If you have brought your computer to a computer repair shop or even a recovery shop and have been told your drive is not recoverable or will … Read more

Hard drive not showing up Windows 10

May 12, 2022January 27, 2022 by Aaron Hook

Desktop Seagate drive that is not showing up when plugged in

This 1TB Hard drive not showing up Windows 10 was a Seagate Desktop HDD with the model number ST1000DM003. It was reported that it had just stopped working randomly with the symptoms of not showing up in Windows 10 when plugged into the computer. The client initially went to a computer repair shop and had the drive diagnosed as failed. When a drive is not showing up in Windows 10, it can be a lot of different things causing the issue. It could be an issue with the drive, with the cables connecting the drive to the computer, the drive itself, or a combination of problems. If there are no odd sounds coming from the drive that is not showing up, it would be a good idea to try plugging the drive into another computer. If the second computer doesn’t see the drive, then you know the drive itself is the issue. Seagate Not Showing Up Recovery In this case, the customer’s local computer repair shop tested the drive by plugging it into a computer … Read more

ST2000LM003 Hard Drive Not Showing Up

May 12, 2022January 7, 2022 by Aaron Hook

Seagate 2TB Portable drive that won't mount

This Seagate ST2000LM003 model hard drive went to a local computer repair shop before it came to us with the issue description of hard drive not showing up. The drive was inside a laptop, and the laptop just stopped working without any drops or spills being involved. For those keeping score this is a Samsung drive branded as a Seagate. These 2TB laptop drives were popular for a while inside some Windows-based laptops. Hard Drive Not Showing Up Data Recovery The repair shop the customer brought their computer to took a look at the laptop and narrowed down the issue to the hard drive itself. While the hard drive was recognized by the computer, it would not mount when plugged into any computer they tried it on. They also tried running data recovery software on the drive but were not able to recover any usable files. The repair shop recommended the client bring the drive to us for data recovery as the data on the drive was quite important to the client. ST2000LM003 diagnosis This … Read more

Hard Drive Not Showing Up After Power Damage

May 12, 2022December 16, 2021 by Aaron Hook

PCB view of burned pins on Seagate Drive

The hard drive not showing up issue can be caused by many different things. The most common issues are ones with bad sectors, failed heads if the drive was dropped, or issues with partition corruption. Anytime a drive stops working right after some sort of power issue (like a power surge), I would suspect the PCB board to have issues. Seagate Hard Drive Not Showing Up This particular Seagate ST2000DM001 2TB Desktop Drive came from a shop that offers some data recovery services, but mainly focuses on computer repair. Their client had reported the drive no longer would be recognized by any computer, and the shop verified this was the case by attaching it to their test machines. The drive wouldn’t even spin up or make any noise when turned on. The shop that looked at the drive initially recommended the customer contact us regarding data recovery as they had important files on the drive that had not been backed up. In the past, this shop had recommended one of the larger data recovery companies … Read more

Hard Drive Makes Clicking Noise and Won’t Boot – Surprising Seagate Data Recovery

September 30, 2022September 2, 2021 by Aaron Hook

There are some times when recoveries just work out better than you expect! This Seagate data recovery project came in as a referral by a local computer repair shop which had diagnosed the drive as likely having a heads issue. They reported the hard drive makes clicking noise and won’t boot. During diagnosis I confirmed that while there wasn’t any platter damage and the heads looked good physically, one of the heads would not read. Hard drive makes clicking noise and won’t boot This Thin model ST500LT012 of the Momentus 500GB drive only has a total of 2 heads, so the most I can get without swapping the head stack is 50%. Basically, the drive was created with a single platter to allow the drive to be super thin. Each side of the platter has a single head reading and writing information. So with one of the heads not working, I could only recover one side of the platter. Because the non-functioning head wasn’t causing any damage, I was able to image 50% of the … Read more

Seagate External Hard Drive Beeping

September 30, 2022August 10, 2021 by Aaron Hook

This beeping Seagate external hard drive came to us as a referral from a local computer shop here in Hutch. It was making a beeping or buzzing sound when power was applied and was not recognized at all by any computer they had tried it on. Beeping or Buzzing Drive Recovery Usually beeping or buzzing on a hard drive is caused by the motor not being able to spin the platters. I would say about 80% of the time this ends up being caused by the heads being stuck on the platter. The other 20% of the time it is a different issue like a bent spindle, failed PCB causing not enough power to reach the motor or other issues. Seagate External Hard Drive Beeping Diagnosis Opening the drive in my clean room environment revealed that the heads were indeed stuck on the platter and the drive motor was not able to spin. The next step was to “unstick” the heads from the platter and inspect for head stack assembly for damage. DYI Beeping Drive … Read more