Read this if you have a Seagate External HDD

[Krish Chandran]

The type of HDD is important too. Seems there are two types in most models.

https://nascompares.com/2017/09/08/what-is-the-difference-between-nas-hard-drives-and-standard-hard-drives-is-it-all-a-big-con/

And you want to ensure CMR not SMR disks. read here. The HDD companies are sliding this through under the radar.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/caveat-emptor-smr-disks-are-being-submarined-into-unexpected-channels/

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/
https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-drives-undocumented-shingle-magnetic-recording/


I had come across these articles  a few months ago.
S*it you learn every day !

How does one know what's inside while buying a disk? That remains an unknown. As far I know specifying CMR/SMR is not part of their documenattion

[krishnanv]

The type of HDD is important too. Seems there are two types in most models.

https://nascompares.com/2017/09/08/what-is-the-difference-between-nas-hard-drives-and-standard-hard-drives-is-it-all-a-big-con/

And you want to ensure CMR not SMR disks. read here. The HDD companies are sliding this through under the radar.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/caveat-emptor-smr-disks-are-being-submarined-into-unexpected-channels/

https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/15/seagate-2-4-and-8tb-barracuda-and-desktop-hdd-smr/
https://blocksandfiles.com/2020/04/16/toshiba-desktop-disk-drives-undocumented-shingle-magnetic-recording/


I had come across these articles  a few months ago.
S*it you learn every day !

How does one know what's inside while buying a disk? That remains an unknown. As far I know specifying CMR/SMR is not part of their documenattion

After this mess up, it is. At least the websites list them now

[Thad E Ginathom]

It seems cloud storage is only reliable way of backup.

This I do not believe. It is reliable as long as the internet works, the broadband is up, the supplier's system is up, etc etc.

All kinds of stuff can fail. Just that the company is huge is no guarantee.

I use cloud for some stuff: it is very convenient, but never as primary backup. I want that to be in my physical hands ---except for the off-site copy, and there is one.

As a retired systems manager, I feel very strongly about this one. I really wanted on-line backups, for the convenience, but we would still have made tape backups. The "cloud" wasn't called that back then, and cost was too high. Over twenty years ago.

[krishnanv]

It seems cloud storage is only reliable way of backup.

This I do not believe. It is reliable as long as the internet works, the broadband is up, the supplier's system is up, etc etc.

All kinds of stuff can fail. Just that the company is huge is no guarantee.

I use cloud for some stuff: it is very convenient, but never as primary backup. I want that to be in my physical hands ---except for the off-site copy, and there is one.

As a retired systems manager, I feel very strongly about this one. I really wanted on-line backups, for the convenience, but we would still have made tape backups. The "cloud" wasn't called that back then, and cost was too high. Over twenty years ago.

Totally agree.
server side = cloud ( a more recent &  fancier name ;-)

Shooting good old film is the safest going by the metric of an archival  physical copy!

[krishnanv]

Seagate SMR/CMR info https://www.seagate.com/in/en/internal-hard-drives/cmr-smr-list/

Western Digital SMR/CMR info https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

[Krish Chandran]

Seagate SMR/CMR info https://www.seagate.com/in/en/internal-hard-drives/cmr-smr-list/

Western Digital SMR/CMR info https://blog.westerndigital.com/wd-red-nas-drives/

This is very useful information !! Thanks.

[MayaV]

Thanks for sharing.

[Neeraj]

Recently I had the misfortune of  my Seagate External HDD failing. One fine day it just stopped powering up. Initially I thought might be the cable but soon realized that it was a mechanical failure of the disk.

I had two years of photographs on that disk and I had not backed them all up.

Usually when a disk fails the first thing that comes to mind is that maybe a program like Recuva can recover the data. But, that needs the disk to spin and when it didn't, I realized that that I needed a higher level of help.

I asked around, researched online and found this company based in Pune called Data Care Labs. When I went there with my disk the main person there – a very capable guy called Amol – opened the disk cover and checked inside. So far only the outer cover was removed – the disk itself was still inside its manufactured cover looking pretty much like the disk in my computer. He was looking for the exact model number so that he could source a "donor disk".

I learned that his methodology – in fact it's the standard method everyone else apparently uses – was to identify the model, source an exact same new (donor) disk and mirror the existing data onto the new disk. Key here was that the model number needed to match.

A model mismatch meant that there would be small differences in the disk architecture that would prevent the software he used from proceeding with the mirroring process.

My faulty 4Tb Seagate was bought on Amazon, manufactured in Wuhan China and almost a year out of warranty.  This was January 2020. As luck would have it my disk did not have a match in his stock of (nearly 4000) pre-bought disks. Wuhan was shut down and supply of this somewhat older disk model had stopped.

So, back to the internet we went, and he found a "match" on a listing on amazon.com (USA). Placed an order and waited ten days for its arrival. But, when it arrived it didn't match. By this time about 3 weeks had passed and I was losing hope of recovering any of the data. I had exhausted all the resources that Amol and Data Care Labs could provide.

Once again I went back online and discovered that consequent to a "Class action Lawsuit " due to a large number of Seagate Disk failures in the United States, Seagate has set up a Data Recovery Center at Amsterdam NL to service the US market. For US customers Seagate arranges free collection, transportation through UPS, repair/recovery, and delivery back to the customer if within warranty. Out of warranty cases need to pay for recovery but not shipping.

Seagate takes your faulty disk – copies the data on an identical new disk and ships it back to you.

I applied through the website, paid in advance, and sent my disk via their shipping invoice though DHL couriers. The DHL courier tracking showed delivery within a couple of days and I started monitoring the data recovery progress tracker that Seagate shared with me.

When after ten days the Seagate progress tracker still showed "disk awaited" I got concerned, wrote a couple of emails and finally got a human being on the phone. When I explained my problem to him (he spoke English) he asked for my UPS tracker ID. That's when it emerged that they deal only and exclusively with UPS – since this is primarily US market oriented. Finally, they got it sorted and my disk was recovered – about 99% - far higher than my expectation. I received my data on a new disk identical to the one I sent.

A few things I learned in this process: -

1.   Goes without saying – backup, backup, and backup. It is a lot less stressful and cheaper to just discard a failed disk when you already have a backup.

2.   External Hard Disk drives are (many times) more prone to failure than internal drives

3.   Seagate External Disks are extremely prone to failure. So also, are Toshiba, Imation, and other similar Chinese brands. Amol showed me about 1200 failed disks
that he was currently working on. One thing he said that stayed with me "Seagate keeps me in business". He recommends Western Digital as more reliable, much
more reliable. Of the 1200 disks he showed me, only 11 were WD. That says it all.

4.   If you have a Seagate disk, especially an external HDD, backup now! Just because it hasn't yet failed does not mean that it won't.

5.   Most times your problem can be sorted by local resources like Data Care Labs at Pune. There are at least two other data recovery companies in Pune who do the
same thing. I am sure if you search you can find one close to where you live. However, if you find that they do not have a donor model number specific to your
disk, opt to take the Amsterdam route instead of spending your effort on more "hit or miss". The next point explains why.

6.    When you source specific models of older disks from abroad, they fall into the OEM category which jacks up the price three times compared to a (say generic 4
Tb) regular commercially available disk. They know you are in trouble and will pay.

7.   If you decide to send your failed disk to Amsterdam use UPS to courier it. Seagate has an agreement with them. Any other courier service may not be so reliable.

8.   Once it reaches Seagate Amsterdam and is logged in, the process is transparent, fast, and very efficient, right up to delivery.

9.   Seagate did not have a system for me to review my data for correctness, before shipping it to me. Its only after it arrived, and I checked it that I discovered it was a surprisingly good job.

10.   Seagate has an office in India which supposedly assists you in this process, but I was not able to contact them.

11.   Google "Seagate Data Recovery" for the recovery site.

And Finally,....

This thread is meant for those who may have failed Seagate disks and are wondering how to recover the data. Or, those interested in informing themselves before the event.

Please do not tell us about how important backing up is and so on. That lesson has been learned.

Also, this thread isn't about backup solutions that you follow, or think is necessary. If you feel an overwhelming urge to share that bit of information, please open another thread for the subject.

Thanks for sharing...

[gnshnkr]

Very helpful and detailed solution, thanks a lot ,

It will surely help many others

Thanks for sharing

[anandjoshi]

Great post. Useful info.

In my career of 20+ years on multiple platforms (SGI, Unix, Apple and Windows), I have learned that never go with mechanical external hard drives sold by companies as mostly they are not performance driven drives. They are designed for storage not on continuous basis, work slower (data transfer speed) with 5400 RPM, cheaper to manufacture and with 1 or 2 year warranty.

I have been buying the best possible internal laptop hard drives from Seagate with 7200 RPM and with largest cache memory and put it in a good quality enclosure [USB 2/3 etc.] (Transcend or OWC if you travel to the US) to make it external.

So far this has been proved to be the best dependable approach for me, not a single failure yet. Touch wood.

Going forward 3D Nand based SSD is the way looks like...

If anyone wish to know more details, feel free to ping me anytime - andyjosh3d@gmail.com

Hope this helps !