Rotational Scaring/ Can I at least see the files Im losing?

[jeff]

Hi All,

I have had three seagate 1.5 TB drives fail on me.

Two I sent in to a data recovery service, said it was rotational scaring.

Is the end or is there anything I can do to get access to the files ?

It's not so much of saving the data as it is to know what files were on them
(tv shows/ movies)

Any crazy thing I can do on my own? Again, just love to know what's on them.


It powers up, click clack sound, some crazy number in my computer as far as
capacity is concerned.

Jeff

 

[GMAN]

Hi All,

I have had three seagate 1.5 TB drives fail on me.

Seagate did the data recovery for free for me due to the issues with the 1.5
firmware.

 

[Rod Speed]

I have had three seagate 1.5 TB drives fail on me.

Two I sent in to a data recovery service, said it was rotational scaring.

Sounds a bit implausible that that happened to two of them.

Is the end

If that description is accurate, yes.

or is there anything I can do to get access to the files ?

Nope, not given what there is on those drives.

It's not so much of saving the data as it is to know what files were on them (tv shows/ movies)

Any crazy thing I can do on my own? Again, just love to know what's on them.

Its likely that the scarring has seen magnetic material on the heads,
or at least one of the heads has actually come right off and its the
remains of the head mounting that has scarred the platter.

It powers up, click clack sound, some crazy number in my computer as far as capacity is concerned.

Likely because the drive cant get the basic info off the drive to work out the size.

 

[jeff]

When you say for free, do you mean a returned new drive with your data from
your old drive on it? Did they send you a 1.5TB drive too?
Hope I can have the same luck. Is there an article referencing seagates 1.5
tb firmware issues so I can reference that?

Thanks,

jeff

"GMAN" wrote in message

Hi All,

I have had three seagate 1.5 TB drives fail on me.

Seagate did the data recovery for free for me due to the issues with the 1.5
firmware.

 

[Arno]

Hi All,

I have had three seagate 1.5 TB drives fail on me.

Two I sent in to a data recovery service, said it was rotational scaring.

As far as I can depermine, that means grooves in the
surface from head contact.

Is the end or is there anything I can do to get access to the files ?

You cannot do anything. They can do a head transplant which
_will_ be expensive and only partially successful, as the
part were the grooves are (and near them) are unreadable by any means.

It's not so much of saving the data as it is to know what files were on them
(tv shows/ movies)

Any crazy thing I can do on my own? Again, just love to know what's on them.
None.

It powers up, click clack sound, some crazy number in my computer as far as
capacity is concerned.

And every power-up does more damage...

Arno

 

[Arno]

When you say for free, do you mean a returned new drive with your data from
your old drive on it? Did they send you a 1.5TB drive too?
Hope I can have the same luck. Is there an article referencing seagates 1.5
tb firmware issues so I can reference that?

Forget it, your problem is not the firmware problem.
And I begin to suspect "GMAN" is full of it.

Arno

 

[GMAN]

When you say for free, do you mean a returned new drive with your data from
your old drive on it? Did they send you a 1.5TB drive too?
Hope I can have the same luck. Is there an article referencing seagates 1.5
tb firmware issues so I can reference that?

Thanks,

jeff

No, it was my same drive. It wasnt from physical dmage. They had some ifssue
with the firmware on the 7200.11 series drives that in certain circumstances
once booted uup a certain amount of times or while booting in a vcertain
fashion, the drive would suddenly appear dead or missing. It couldnt even be
detected by the system bios and for al internsive purposes it was dead. They
had me send it to their 360 recovery service or whatever it was called and
they made the drive visible again using their special firmware setup and sent
the drive back. Unfortunately , the drive now shows in the SMART table as
having many spin up retries and so and SMART monitoring software rates the
drive as less than ideal. Its still safe to use, but it will not be my boot
drive now.

It was done for free for me.

"Seagate's explanation:

Description
An issue exists that may cause some Seagate hard drives to become inoperable
immediately after a power-on operation. Once this condition has occurred, the
drive cannot be restored to normal operation without intervention from
Seagate. Data on the drive will be unaffected and can be accessed once normal
drive operation has been restored. This is caused by a firmware issue coupled
with a specific manufacturing test process.

Root Cause
This condition was introduced by a firmware issue that sets the drive event
log to an invalid location causing the drive to become inaccessible.
The firmware issue is that the end boundary of the event log circular buffer
(320) was set incorrectly. During Event Log initialization, the boundary
condition that defines the end of the Event Log is off by one. During power
up, if the Event Log counter is at entry 320, or a multiple of (320 + x*256),
and if a particular data pattern (dependent on the type of tester used during
the drive manufacturing test process) had been present in the reserved-area
system tracks when the drive's reserved-area file system was created during
manufacturing, firmware will increment the Event Log pointer past the end of
the event log data structure. This error is detected and results in an "Assert
Failure", which causes the drive to hang as a failsafe measure. When the drive
enters failsafe further update s to the counter become impossible and the
condition will remain through subsequent power cycles. The problem only arises
if a power cycle initialization occurs when the Event Log is at 320 or some
multiple of 256 thereafter. Once a drive is in this state, there is no path to
resolve/recover existing failed drives without Seagate technical intervention.
For a drive to be susceptible to this issue, it must have both the firmware
that contains the issue and have been tested through the specific
manufacturing process.

Corrective Action
Seagate has implemented a containment action to ensure that all manufacturing
test processes write the same "benign" fill pattern. This change is a
permanent part of the test process. All drives with a date of manufacture
January 12, 2009 and later are not affected by this issue as they have been
through the corrected test process.

Recommendation
Seagate strongly recommends customers proactively update all affected drives
to the latest firmware. If you have experienced a problem, or have an affected
drive exhibiting this behavior, please contact your appropriate Seagate
representative. If you are unable to access your data due to this issue,
Seagate will provide free data recovery services. Seagate will work with you
to expedite a remedy to minimize any disruption to you or your business."


http://www.expreview.
com/img/topic/seagate_firmware/1-16_KB11_Barracuda_Field_Update.pdf





Here are some links to what the issue was.



http://forums.seagate.
com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-Barracuda/7200-11-falling-down-ST3500320AS-SD15-
and-others-no-detect-in/m-p/13553?view=by_date_ascending



http://www.tomshardware.
com/forum/248564-32-recognize-seagate-internal-hard-drive






Here is a do it yourself fix using a serial adapter

http://sites.google.com/site/seagatefix/

 

[GMAN]

Forget it, your problem is not the firmware problem.
And I begin to suspect "GMAN" is full of it.

Arno

So what you are implying is that I didnt have the lockup issue and that
Seagate didnt recover my firmware for me for free??? How the hell would you
know???? They had me send in my drive to some recovery service they own
called i365 . It has now been renamed to evault.


http://www.evault.com/




Maybe you are just pissed other persons other than yourself actually offer
help once in a while here.





Thanks,

 

[Joe Kotroczo]

When you say for free, do you mean a returned new drive with your data from
your old drive on it? Did they send you a 1.5TB drive too?
Hope I can have the same luck. Is there an article referencing seagates 1.5
tb firmware issues so I can reference that?

You don't have a Firmware issue. Rotational Scarring only occurs through
impacting the head sliders onto the platters while the platters rotate.

Commonly known as a "head crash".

To recover any data off those drives, they need to be opened in a
cleanroom, thoroughly cleaned of any debris, and either the headstack
replaced or the platters transplanted into a known good drive of the
some manufacturing batch.

 

[Arno]

So what you are implying is that I didnt have the lockup issue and that

I do imply that you did not read the OPs problem description
or did not understand it, as you posted something completely
unrelated.

Arno

 

[GMAN]

You don't have a Firmware issue. Rotational Scarring only occurs through
impacting the head sliders onto the platters while the platters rotate.

The company that quoted rotational scarring may have used that as some generic
excuse that the drive is beyong their capacity to fix.


I doubt he had 3 drives suffer the same rotational scarring by themselves
out of thin air.
..

 

[GMAN]

I do imply that you did not read the OPs problem description
or did not understand it, as you posted something completely
unrelated.

Arno

No , what i said was that he should have contacted Seagate first since he had
3 go bad, and they would have dealt with him for free using their i360 service
to get the drives functional again. Do you honestly believe he could have 3
straight 1.5TB drives suffer a head crash with no physical impact done to the
drives????


explain that, doctor?

 

[Joe Kotroczo]

The company that quoted rotational scarring may have used that as some generic
excuse that the drive is beyong their capacity to fix.

Why would they use such a specific diagnosis as a "generic excuse"?

I doubt he had 3 drives suffer the same rotational scarring by themselves
out of thin air.

How do you know? Did you open the drives and had a look (as the company
doing the diagnosis surely must have done, as opening the drives is IMHO
the only way to arrive at a diagnosis of rotational scarring)?

Who said anything about "by themselves out of thin air"? If he's really
got 3 drives which headcrashed at the same time, I'd say someone kicked
his NAS down the stairs while it was running... But that's pure
speculation, maybe the OP can elaborate.

 

[Rod Speed]

Joe Kotroczo wrote

GMAN wrote

Why would they use such a specific diagnosis as a "generic excuse"?

Because its the sort of damage that no one can argue about being a drive
that the data cant be retrieved from at anything but an outrageous price and
even then it can only be recovered from the areas what havent be gouged.

How do you know?

Basic statistics. It doesnt happen to that high a percentage of drives,
so its very very unlikely that that is what happened to your 3 drives.

Did you open the drives and had a look

You dont need to do that to know that its very unlikely to be true with 3 drives from one individual.

(as the company doing the diagnosis surely must have done,

You dont know that either.

as opening the drives is IMHO the only way to arrive at a diagnosis of rotational scarring)?

Or they can lie about why they couldnt recover the data.

Who said anything about "by themselves out of thin air"? If he's really got 3 drives which headcrashed at the same
time,

Doesnt happen.

I'd say someone kicked his NAS down the stairs while it was running...

Its bloody unlikely that if that had happened, that he wouldnt have said that that had happened.

But that's pure speculation, maybe the OP can elaborate.

Bet he doesnt say it was anything like that.

 

[GMAN]

Why would they use such a specific diagnosis as a "generic excuse"?

Cant figure out what else is wrong so called it a "Head crash"

How do you know? Did you open the drives and had a look (as the company
doing the diagnosis surely must have done, as opening the drives is IMHO
the only way to arrive at a diagnosis of rotational scarring)?

Who said anything about "by themselves out of thin air"? If he's really
got 3 drives which headcrashed at the same time, I'd say someone kicked
his NAS down the stairs while it was running... But that's pure
speculation, maybe the OP can elaborate.

Not just speculation, thats a major ASSumption.....LOL!

 

[Joe Kotroczo]

On 04/01/2012 17:25, GMAN wrote:

(...)

Cant figure out what else is wrong so called it a "Head crash"

That's an ASSumption on your part.

Maybe the OP can tell us which "data recovery service" he sent them to.
And whether he paid for the diagnosis and how much. Because you're
implying fraudulent behaviour on the part of the "data recovery service"
here.

 

[GMAN]

On 04/01/2012 17:25, GMAN wrote:

(...)

That's an ASSumption on your part.

Maybe the OP can tell us which "data recovery service" he sent them to.
And whether he paid for the diagnosis and how much. Because you're
implying fraudulent behaviour on the part of the "data recovery service"
here.

Wouldnt be the first time i am sure.

 

[jeff]

I used Gilware Inc.....they were the ones who diagnosed it as rotational
scaring.

Seagate is taking all my defective 1.5s back and giving me back 2.0tb...just
wish I knew the files I lost!!!



"GMAN" wrote in message

On 04/01/2012 17:25, GMAN wrote:

(...)

That's an ASSumption on your part.

Maybe the OP can tell us which "data recovery service" he sent them to.
And whether he paid for the diagnosis and how much. Because you're
implying fraudulent behaviour on the part of the "data recovery service"
here.

Wouldnt be the first time i am sure.

 

[Joe Kotroczo]

I used Gilware Inc.....they were the ones who diagnosed it as rotational
scaring.

Seagate is taking all my defective 1.5s back and giving me back 2.0tb...just
wish I knew the files I lost!!!

Well, that one's easy. You have lost ALL the files that are on the
defective discs. Because by the sound of it, nobody will do a data
recovery job on them, right?

If you can't remember what you had on those discs, I can't have been
very important.

 

[Rod Speed]

Joe Kotroczo wrote

jeff wrote

Well, that one's easy. You have lost ALL the files that are on the
defective discs. Because by the sound of it, nobody will do a data
recovery job on them, right?

If you can't remember what you had on those discs, I can't have been very important.

Thats just plain wrong with stuff you recorded to watch later.

It may well be important enough to get again if you have a list of what got lost.