This morning we successfully recovered from this Seagate Barracuda 3.5″ ST1000DM003 hard disk for a business client.
This disk is from Seagate’s dreaded “DM” family, which is notorious for developing problems with its media cache, problems with flaking platters and issues with weak heads. This disk had an issue with all three.
Software to recover a inaccessible Seagate disk?
The client’s IT support did try to run data recovery software on this Seagate disk. However, while the disk was recognised. The data recovery software kept on freezing during operation.
Why data recovery software is useless at recovering from ST1000DM001,ST1000DM003, ST2000DM002, ST2000DM0006 ST3000DM007 series disks.
Unfortunately, data recovery software is designed to run on healthy electro-mechanical disks. It is not designed to run on disks with firmware problems or disk-head problems. Nor, it is designed to work on disks which have flaking platters!
We backed up the ROM, P-list, non-resident G-list, translator and firmware overlays. We then resolved the media cache issue which finally took the disk out of its continual “BSY” or “busy” mode. We then modified the head-map and imaged the disk at very slow speed.
All of the client’s Word, Excel, PowerPoint along with their Herbst ERP data files were successfully recovered. The recovered files were delivered on a new USB external disk to the delighted customer.