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I have a failed hard drive (from the infamous ST3000DM001 line). The symptoms of this failure are that it registers the wrong size when plugged into any system (usually 4.1GB when it's supposed to be 3TB). It also fails with IO error on any read.

So, it seems pretty toast.

My question is: do these symptoms seem like any recovery is possible? 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. My hope would be that replacing the read heads might just get this working.

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    If the data is important enough, contact a company that specializes in data recovery, they typically have the tools to image the HDD in different ways not typically available to consumer data recovery tools. Most companies will give you a quote or an estimate and only charge you a full price if they are successful in recovery some or all your data. If you attempt to replace the heads yourself your data is really toast.
    – Ramhound
    Commented May 12, 2023 at 2:08
  • Yeah, definitely won't be trying anything myself. Honestly, trying to avoid going to data recovery services if there's reason to believe that the data is totally gone. This drive isn't that important.
    – George
    Commented May 12, 2023 at 3:20
  • These companies literally have donor drives, it costs nothing, to reach out to a company and ask if they had any luck recovering data from that model
    – Ramhound
    Commented May 12, 2023 at 3:32

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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/ 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?

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Your description does not allow for the judgment you are looking for. Labs will always make you believe that there is a hope for recovery.

You won't get around finding a specialized recovery lab and pay them their fixed examination fee if that is part of their business model.

Edit: 12.5.2023 14:00

According to Joep von Steen many labs offer free diagnostics. As he should know better than me, you obviously can get free diagnostics.

Major labs like Kroll Ontrack are in a position to charge you a diagnostic fee. Smaller labs, probably desperately fighting for business may not charge such a fee.

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  • Plenty labs offer free diagnostics. There is hope for recovery.
    – Joep van Steen
    Commented May 12, 2023 at 11:56
  • Yes, diagnostic fee is interesting topic actually. How much work goes into it. One may argue that to come up with a reasonable estimation a spinning drive and a suspicion of physical damage, should be opened in a cleanroom, heads disassembled, platters taken out .. From there to actual head replacement is small step. So I assume most labs do not do this and come up with an educated guess based on experience with a particular drive model. Also tools allow for estimating condition of heads without opening the drive.
    – Joep van Steen
    Commented May 12, 2023 at 12:30
  • Some labs charge diagnostic fee and I can see why .. Often labor goes into diagnostics which is wasted if client denies the quote. No diagnostic fee and fixed rates is mostly marketing driven I think.
    – Joep van Steen
    Commented May 12, 2023 at 12:32

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