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My question is: do these symptoms seem like any recovery is possible?

This will mainly depend on the state of the platter surface. But often, yes.

If the surface is severely damaged this often the result of a drive being dropped or hit by physical impact and subsequent and repeated DIY recovery attempts.

My hypothesis is that maybe the drive platters are fine but the heads are failing due to some circuit issue and that's why reading always fails and it can't even tell the right size.

It could indeed be an issue with the heads, but more likely the drive is unable to read / interpret the system area of the drive. It could be purely a firmware issue too in which case the drive may not even require cleanroom work, but a tool like PC3000 would suffice. Using such a 'firmware manipulation tool' like PC3000 may allow the drive to boot and for the drive to be cloned.

Once you power on a drive you could compare this to a PC booting. Booting starts with the processor / controller accessing the most basic info it needs from a ROM. Then at some point it will look for the OS, or in case of a hard drive for the SA (system area). The system area is on the hard drive platters itself. If for some reason the 'OS' or file system is corrupt, booting will fail at some point. This can often explain hard drives not ID-ing correctly and reporting incorrect size.

See for more info: http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2600&p=19090#p19087

My hope would be that replacing the read heads might just get this working.

It depends on the condition of the platter surface. Often replacing the head stack works. The degree of surface damage however may be such that subsequent donor head stacks may fail too. This would make recovery very costly. If we consider for example a lab like 300 Dollar Data Recovery, the standard base fee does not include the costs for replacement parts.

But again, the issue could be firmware related only.

Unfortunately the data recovery industry is a bit of a wild west. If you have doubts about a particular firm you could for example ask in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskADataRecoveryPro/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/ about experiences with the lab. Do not settle for subpar answers, ask for explanations as the people who answer might as well be representing competing labs or place their advice on some anecdotal experience.

I almost do not deal with hard drives myself at all unless people press me, so I don't care where you ship it to. About that, did you contact Seagate support to see if you qualify for their free data recovery service?

My question is: do these symptoms seem like any recovery is possible?

This will mainly depend on the state of the platter surface. But often, yes.

If the surface is severely damaged this often the result of a drive being dropped or hit by physical impact and subsequent and repeated DIY recovery attempts.

My hypothesis is that maybe the drive platters are fine but the heads are failing due to some circuit issue and that's why reading always fails and it can't even tell the right size.

It could indeed be an issue with the heads, but more likely the drive is unable to read / interpret the system area of the drive. It could be purely a firmware issue too in which case the drive may not even require cleanroom work, but a tool like PC3000 would suffice. Using such a 'firmware manipulation tool' like PC3000 may allow the drive to boot and for the drive to be cloned.

Once you power on a drive you could compare this to a PC booting. Booting starts with the processor / controller accessing the most basic info it needs from a ROM. Then at some point it will look for the OS, or in case of a hard drive for the SA (system area). The system area is on the hard drive platters itself. If for some reason the 'OS' or file system is corrupt, booting will fail at some point. This can often explain hard drives not ID-ing correctly and reporting incorrect size.

See for more info: http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2600&p=19090#p19087

My hope would be that replacing the read heads might just get this working.

It depends on the condition of the platter surface. Often replacing the head stack works. The degree of surface damage however may be such that subsequent donor head stacks may fail too. This would make recovery very costly. If we consider for example a lab like 300 Dollar Data Recovery, the standard base fee does not include the costs for replacement parts.

But again, the issue could be firmware related only.

Unfortunately the data recovery industry is a bit of a wild west. If you have doubts about a particular firm you could for example ask in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskADataRecoveryPro/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/ or https://forum.hddguru.com/ about experiences with the lab. Do not settle for subpar answers, ask for explanations as the people who answer might as well be representing competing labs or place their advice on some anecdotal experience.

I almost do not deal with hard drives myself at all unless people press me, so I don't care where you ship it to. About that, did you contact Seagate support to see if you qualify for their free data recovery service?

My question is: do these symptoms seem like any recovery is possible?

This will mainly depend on the state of the platter surface. But often, yes.

If the surface is severely damaged this often the result of a drive being dropped or hit by physical impact and subsequent and repeated DIY recovery attempts.

My hypothesis is that maybe the drive platters are fine but the heads are failing due to some circuit issue and that's why reading always fails and it can't even tell the right size.

It could indeed be an issue with the heads, but more likely the drive is unable to read / interpret the system area of the drive. It could be purely a firmware issue too in which case the drive may not even require cleanroom work, but a tool like PC3000 would suffice. Using such a 'firmware manipulation tool' like PC3000 may allow the drive to boot and for the drive to be cloned.

Once you power on a drive you could compare this to a PC booting. Booting starts with the processor / controller accessing the most basic info it needs from a ROM. Then at some point it will look for the OS, or in case of a hard drive for the SA (system area). The system area is on the hard drive platters itself. If for some reason the 'OS' or file system is corrupt, booting will fail at some point. This can often explain hard drives not ID-ing correctly and reporting incorrect size.

See for more info: http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2600&p=19090#p19087

My hope would be that replacing the read heads might just get this working.

It depends on the condition of the platter surface. Often replacing the head stack works. The degree of surface damage however may be such that subsequent donor head stacks may fail too. This would make recovery very costly.

But again, the issue could be firmware related only.

Unfortunately the data recovery industry is a bit of a wild west. If you have doubts about a particular firm you could for example ask in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskADataRecoveryPro/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/ about experiences with the lab. Do not settle for subpar answers, ask for explanations as the people who answer might as well be representing competing labs.

I do not deal with hard drives myself, so I don't care where you ship it to. About that, did you contact Seagate support to see if you qualify for their free data recovery service?

My question is: do these symptoms seem like any recovery is possible?

This will mainly depend on the state of the platter surface. But often, yes.

If the surface is severely damaged this often the result of a drive being dropped or hit by physical impact and subsequent and repeated DIY recovery attempts.

My hypothesis is that maybe the drive platters are fine but the heads are failing due to some circuit issue and that's why reading always fails and it can't even tell the right size.

It could indeed be an issue with the heads, but more likely the drive is unable to read / interpret the system area of the drive. It could be purely a firmware issue too in which case the drive may not even require cleanroom work, but a tool like PC3000 would suffice. Using such a 'firmware manipulation tool' like PC3000 may allow the drive to boot and for the drive to be cloned.

Once you power on a drive you could compare this to a PC booting. Booting starts with the processor / controller accessing the most basic info it needs from a ROM. Then at some point it will look for the OS, or in case of a hard drive for the SA (system area). The system area is on the hard drive platters itself. If for some reason the 'OS' or file system is corrupt, booting will fail at some point. This can often explain hard drives not ID-ing correctly and reporting incorrect size.

See for more info: http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2600&p=19090#p19087

My hope would be that replacing the read heads might just get this working.

It depends on the condition of the platter surface. Often replacing the head stack works. The degree of surface damage however may be such that subsequent donor head stacks may fail too. This would make recovery very costly. If we consider for example a lab like 300 Dollar Data Recovery, the standard base fee does not include the costs for replacement parts.

But again, the issue could be firmware related only.

Unfortunately the data recovery industry is a bit of a wild west. If you have doubts about a particular firm you could for example ask in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskADataRecoveryPro/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/ about experiences with the lab. Do not settle for subpar answers, ask for explanations as the people who answer might as well be representing competing labs or place their advice on some anecdotal experience.

I almost do not deal with hard drives myself at all unless people press me, so I don't care where you ship it to. About that, did you contact Seagate support to see if you qualify for their free data recovery service?

My question is: do these symptoms seem like any recovery is possible?

This will mainly depend on the state of the platter surface. But often, yes.

My hypothesis is that maybe the drive platters are fine but the heads are failing due to some circuit issue and that's why reading always fails and it can't even tell the right size.

It could indeed be an issue with the heads, but more likely the drive is unable to read / interpret the system area of the drive. It could be purely a firmware issue too in which case the drive may not even require cleanroom work, but a tool like PC3000 would suffice. Using such a 'firmware manipulation tool' like PC3000 may allow the drive to boot and for the drive to be cloned.

Once you power on a drive you could compare this to a PC booting. Booting starts with the processor / controller accessing the most basic info it needs from a ROM. Then at some point it will look for the OS, or in case of a hard drive for the SA (system area). The system area is on the hard drive platters itself. See for example: http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2600&p=19090#p19087

My hope would be that replacing the read heads might just get this working.

It depends on the condition of the platter surface. Often replacing the head stack works. The degree of surface damage however may be such that subsequent donor head stacks may fail too. This would make recovery very costly.

But again, the issue could be firmware related only.

Unfortunately the data recovery industry is a bit of a wild west. If you have doubts about a particular firm you could for example ask in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskADataRecoveryPro/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/ about experiences with the lab. Do not settle for subpar answers, ask for explanations as the people who answer might as well be representing competing labs.

I do not deal with hard drives myself, so I don't care where you ship it to. About that, did you contact Seagate support to see if you qualify for their free data recovery service?

My question is: do these symptoms seem like any recovery is possible?

This will mainly depend on the state of the platter surface. But often, yes.

If the surface is severely damaged this often the result of a drive being dropped or hit by physical impact and subsequent and repeated DIY recovery attempts.

My hypothesis is that maybe the drive platters are fine but the heads are failing due to some circuit issue and that's why reading always fails and it can't even tell the right size.

It could indeed be an issue with the heads, but more likely the drive is unable to read / interpret the system area of the drive. It could be purely a firmware issue too in which case the drive may not even require cleanroom work, but a tool like PC3000 would suffice. Using such a 'firmware manipulation tool' like PC3000 may allow the drive to boot and for the drive to be cloned.

Once you power on a drive you could compare this to a PC booting. Booting starts with the processor / controller accessing the most basic info it needs from a ROM. Then at some point it will look for the OS, or in case of a hard drive for the SA (system area). The system area is on the hard drive platters itself. If for some reason the 'OS' or file system is corrupt, booting will fail at some point. This can often explain hard drives not ID-ing correctly and reporting incorrect size. 

See for more info: http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2600&p=19090#p19087

My hope would be that replacing the read heads might just get this working.

It depends on the condition of the platter surface. Often replacing the head stack works. The degree of surface damage however may be such that subsequent donor head stacks may fail too. This would make recovery very costly.

But again, the issue could be firmware related only.

Unfortunately the data recovery industry is a bit of a wild west. If you have doubts about a particular firm you could for example ask in https://www.reddit.com/r/AskADataRecoveryPro/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecovery/ about experiences with the lab. Do not settle for subpar answers, ask for explanations as the people who answer might as well be representing competing labs.

I do not deal with hard drives myself, so I don't care where you ship it to. About that, did you contact Seagate support to see if you qualify for their free data recovery service?