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HDR / The work we take on / Seagate data recovery

Specialist · Seagate disks and externals

Seagate recovery in Hull. The badge covers many drives; the ST number says which is on the bench.

The Seagate drives come into our facility from across Hull and the East Riding, most as externals (an external Expansion or an external Backup Plus) from the desk where, for most users, they are the only place the photographs are kept. The remaining are desktop Barracudas, NAS IronWolf disks removed from network storage appliances, and SkyHawk disks pulled from video surveillance systems. Only one badge is used but many devices are represented. Read the ST number from the label prior to calling. This number will tell us how many platters are installed, if there are overlapping tracks, and which donor components will need to be found.

Only pay if we recover your data, on most jobs Free to look at, then one fixed price Parcels come in from Beverley, Grimsby and Skegness

An engineer will take the details
0800 6890668

Putting a name to the symptom.

Nothing similar? Go to the triage →
What you seeWhat the fault isWhat to try
Ticking from a Seagate external driveThe heads went down. What was written to the platters remains intact.Unplug it and leave it unplugged
Windows lists it but reports 0GBThe firmware area on the Seagate has failed. The platters have been unaltered.Serial port work at the bench.
A DVR disk will not read on a PCRecorders use their own format, which is unreadable by WindowsIt usually comes back okay.
A Barracuda has been getting slower for monthsSectors are being retried multiple times. Shingled drives will be worse than others in this situation.Copy it now!
An IronWolf has left the NAS.There is one disk missing. Performing a rebuild to a sick disk simply creates more problems.Stop work on the rebuild and ring us
A FireCuda is no longer listed.FireCuda covers both a hybrid disk with flash added to it and an NVMe SSD.Please let us know which one you have.
Send it to us: get a quote first, either over the telephone or via our online quote form. Then carefully package it to prevent damage in transit, insure it for its full value and post the package using a trackable service to the Leeds intake laboratory; alternatively you may drop it off there (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm, no appointment needed). For laptops, PCs, Macs and recorders, we require only the drive unit itself (storage soldered to the board is not taken on; if you're not sure which kind you have, ring us first); for RAID arrays and servers, we just need the individual disks, labelled by their respective bays; for a NAS, send the drives if you can remove them, but if not, please include the entire NAS device. A single external drive goes whole, with its cable and power adapter. We pay for return postage. If you would like an engineer to inspect the packaging prior to taping the box closed, please give us a call first. Further information is available on our sending page.

What is under the Seagate badge, and how each one fails.

Expansion, Backup Plus, One TouchThe portables and most of what we get in are 2.5in disks that go into plastic shells and then have a USB board soldered to them. These do not have a SATA connector hidden behind the case as some other disks do. When one of these ticks it is the heads, and then it will need donor parts and a long time to copy off all your data.
Barracuda and FireCudaThe Barracuda is a standard 3.5in disk used in desktop computers and gaming machines. The larger Barracudas overlap their tracks so a copy could take days to complete (not hours). There are two products under the name FireCuda: a hybrid disk that has flash bolted to it and a simple NVMe SSD. Since they fail differently, the model number settles it.
IronWolf, SkyHawk, ExosIronWolf is used in network attached storage systems (NAS), SkyHawk is used in CCTV recording devices and Exos is used in servers. If any of these disks fault you will likely be looking at either an array or a video recorder rather than a single drive.
The firmware areaEvery Seagate disk stores its own settings onto the disk platter including how to map a block number from the operating system to a location on the disk. If this information is damaged, a healthy drive will say it has zero GB available or will report a device name that does not match the actual device name or it may just spin up and remain quiet. No program on your computer can communicate with it, because it didn't make it to that point. It must be repaired through a serial connection at the workbench.

From the box arriving to the files going back.

01

A case number first, then a free diagnosis Free

Every piece of gear that shows up receives a case number on the very same day it arrives. An engineer examines it and determines what is really wrong with it and there is no charge for this. We give you straight language about which files we will be able to copy from the disk and which ones we won't be able to. Then we provide you with a single price quote, in writing, based upon these findings. We don't begin working on anything until you agree to the quoted price.

The diagnosis is freeOne price, put in writingNothing to pay yet
02

Heard before it is worked on

Nothing is connected to a computer. A photo of the drive is made, the ST number is read from the label, and it is powered up on the bench for a few seconds so the technician may hear it. Ticking, beeping and silence indicate different things. If it ticks it is switched off again.

Photographed on arrivalWhat has actually failed
03

Copied before it is touched

First, a complete image of the entire disk is made; all subsequent steps utilise this image. The weak areas receive the shortest pass, and those areas determined to be the most damaged are saved for last. On shingled disks, depending upon the damage, this may take several days. No part of the repair process will write anything to your original disk; all of the wear falls on the copied images.

Imaged before any repairYour disk stays read-only
04

Heads, or the firmware area

Which one it is determines what kind of work needs to be done. A new head assembly is fitted using a donor unit of the exact same type and build date. The drive is then read very slowly. Broken firmware areas require repair of modules sequentially through a serial connection. The case is not opened.

Donor headsFirmware read over serial
05

You sign it off, then it comes back

You will not be charged while you think about this. First, you receive a list of everything that was recovered from the drive. Once you have seen the list and given us the go-ahead, the bill comes next. Files are returned to you on media purchased specifically for this job and we cover the return postage as well. Your job is kept open by us until you can view them on your personal computer.

You approve the listing firstCopied onto new mediaReturn postage at our cost

What turns up most often

  • Externals are the ones posted in: an Expansion or a Backup Plus, one disk and one copy, and there is no other backup. They tick because the heads have failed. Anything you can install won't make a difference, and each time you plug it in again you wear off some additional material on the platters.
  • A drive reporting 0GB is not a wiped drive: the drive has lost access to the mapping information relative to its own data, and still contains everything it always had. A PC cannot connect to a disk if the disk never completes its self-introduction process. Therefore, all communications with the drive will occur over a serial connection. We find this type of job relatively reliable.
  • Read speeds are slow on shingled drives, and this is normal: tracks overlap, so the disk must shuffle data about instead of writing directly to it. A 4TB portable can take days to read off; there's no way to make it faster than this. Being told the job will run into next week does not mean it is running badly.
  • The label photo is worth taking: the ST number indicates what size drive it is, the form factor, whether it is shingled and which donor parts would need to be found. External drives hide their labels under their shell, so read out any information available on the outside and we'll figure out the rest here.

What returns, and what doesn't: most Seagate failures are typical. Heads fail but they get replaced. Firmware areas break but they can get repaired using a serial port. Shingled drives may read slowly but they will read eventually. The surface is where we have to be honest. The problem is when a head stack has previously been dragged across the surfaces of the disks. In many cases, this causes scarring of the tracks, and once a track becomes scarred it will yield nothing; no laboratory can recover anything that is no longer there, regardless of cost for attempting to do so. Any data that has been written over is also gone. In the event your recorder has looped over the video, or you've used a format followed by weeks of use, some part of your data has been lost permanently. Hardware encryption exists on many portable devices. Those require your password, as the encryption cannot be bypassed. We do not accept phones or tablets of any kind. When the answer is no, you'll receive a call from us at no charge.

One case from the casebook.

HU · HUL-2026-0841LOGGED ✓

A Backup Plus that spun up and said nothing

We received a job from an accounting firm in Beverley. They were having issues with a 4TB Backup Plus. On Friday the drive worked fine. By Monday the drive did not appear anywhere. The drive spun correctly, made the correct noises and no computer could find it. The problem lay within the firmware section and not with the physical disk; essentially the drive was hung up before it even recognised itself. The case was taken apart and the disk connected directly. The modules were run through the serial connection and fixed until the drive gave its correct size. All sectors were copied during the initial pass. This took three days, start to finish.

100% copied3 days after it landed

Before you box it up.

Do these first

  • First get a quote, then send all of your external (case, lead and power supply)
  • Please provide us with your ST number (printed on the drive's label).
  • When we ask how it sounded when you plugged it into your PC, tell us exactly what you heard. Did it make ticking noises? Beep? Or was it silent?
  • Has anyone already opened your enclosure? Please let us know if any screws have been removed or any plastic parts broken.

What not to do

  • Checking by plugging the ticking drive back in.
  • Performing a surface scan on a sick disk.
  • Trying to update the firmware to help with this issue.
  • Reconnecting the circuit board to another working disk

Asked most weeks, answered here.

My Seagate external ticks. Is anything still on it?

Generally yes. Ticking is the heads losing track or position: they park, try to find the right spot, then park again. This is the noise that the mechanics make. Not from the data. Whatever you wrote on the platters, it's still there. But we can't read it until the heads are replaced. And each time you turn on the drive it will drag those old heads across the surface. Turn it off and keep it off; then let someone who has access to an imaging bench do it.

Does the model number on the label actually matter?

This really does help. The ST number tells us the family of drives, its capacity, the size of the drive, how many platters are inside and whether or not the tracks are overlapping (which determines how long the copy will be). For a head repair, the ST number will be very helpful in narrowing down where to look for the donor parts, since a stack only goes into a drive of the same model and manufacturing run. With an external enclosure, the label is located underneath the housing, so read out what is on the outside, and the rest can wait until it reaches us.

Can you get footage off a SkyHawk out of a CCTV recorder?

Yes, often. A surveillance hard drive is just a normal hard drive; therefore, a failed hard drive is repaired and copied similar to any other failed hard drive. The difficult part is that the recorder (DVR and/or NVR) creates its own format for storing recorded events. A standard PC will display a disk that contains formatted information as being completely blank or "unformatted." We work from a copy created from the original disk(s), extracting the recorded video from that copy. Nobody can recover deleted video clips that have already been overwritten by the recorder. Most recorders loop continuously. As such, if you want to preserve recorded events, remove the disk from the recorder immediately after you know the event is significant enough to warrant preserving it.

What exactly do I send, and where does the parcel go?

Get your quote first, by phone or with the form, and then send us the drive. External units travel in their cases along with the cables and any power supplies. Disks taken from a desktop PC, a NAS or a recorder will be sent without any casing, in an antistatic bag inside a padded box, with no bubble wrap against the board. If you cannot remove the disks from a NAS unit, please send the whole unit. If you took a disk from an array, please identify each bay when removing the disks. We don't take mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets. We cannot collect anything, so please post the item via an insured and trackable method to the Leeds intake lab. Alternatively, feel free to bring the item to the Leeds intake lab yourself, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5:30pm (no appointment needed).

What people read after this.

Built-in drives → The noise it makes → Not seen by the PC → Everything we take in →

A drive left switched off loses nothing more.

Leave it off. There are only a few start attempts left in your failing drive and each attempt uses up a little more of what remains. Our complimentary diagnosis will determine what files are readable.

0800 6890668

Have it looked at How to post it to us