Data Recovery for Seagate ST9100828A by SalvageData

We will discuss some commonly experienced user problems with the Seagate ST9100828A hard drives. The source of this information is the observation and experience gathered by dealing with various damaged and failed hard drives which come to our lab for data recovery purposes. And since we mostly come across defective hard disks, our data cannot be a representative of the overall performance statistics of the Seagate ST9100828A and should not be extrapolated to that effect.

One of the most common problems which are experienced in Seagate Barracuda disk drives (specifically with 7200.7, 7200.8, 7200.9 and 7200.10 series) relate to their read/write head components. Seagate introduced a new special coating technology in this line for the platters intended and designed to better protect the magnetic layers on the platter. The long term effect of this coating was that it caused more problems than the level of protection it offered to the drive. This protective layer tends to flake under certain environmental conditions, causing small bits of the flaky particles to stick to the read/ write heads which makes reading very unstable. When these particles get embedded in substantial quantities, the disk drive will lose track positioning. This results in failed read/write ability making user data completely inaccessible. The symptoms of such a failure are clicking, knocking, sweeping sounds: .

Yet it must be kept in mind that non-spinning of the hard drive can also result from a seized motor, apart from damaged PCBA. The Seagate ST9100828A would make a buzzing sound as it tries to spin up. If the cause is a seized motor, data recovery will require a platter transplant from the bad drive into a working donor spindle in our class 100 clean room environment.

The "sticktion" of the read/write heads on the platter surface is also experienced quite frequently with Seagate ST9100828A. This occurs when the read or write heads fail to park in their designated parking areas (reserved parking on platters or ramp outside platters). Inability to park in these areas results in the heads landing on the spinning platter surface. When the motor spins, the thermal energy produced as a result of the frictional force causes the heads to stick on to the platters, which is not easy to release without the use of proper tools and techniques. If you try to open up the drive yourself without the tools or expertise, you certainly will loose all data by damaging the internal components of the hard drive.

There is also the possibility for Seagate ST9100828A to experience degradation due to the development of bad sectors. This usually happens after some period of time when the magnetic media which the platters are covered with starts to degrade and bad sectors develop.

Whenever the Seagate ST9100828A drive hits such unreadable bad sector it could start scratching, freezing, ticking accompanied mostly with loud clicking sound. This leads to further damage of the surface and eventually more data loss. As soon as you start experiencing such symptoms while reading from the drive, stop the drive immediately to prevent further data loss. In our lab we use special imaging hardware tools that are capable of reading raw sector data from the Seagate ST9100828A ignoring checksum check. That's usually the only way to retrieve as much data as possible from ST9100828A models with bad sectors.

Faulty firmware in the form of corrupt microcode is also a cause for trouble which results in initialization failure. In this situation the hard drive does not exhibit any problems with spinning and seems to spin normally. Such drives could display one of the following symptoms:

If you receive any of the messages listed above , just assume safely that your Seagate ST9100828A hard disk has failed and you need to contact professional data recovery help in order to save and recover your precious data. Just immediately stop further operations and contact Salvage Data Recovery Labs.

SalvageData has a very high recovery success rate with Seagate ST9100828A hard drives. In addition we provide a free diagnostics and evaluation and therefore recommend that you do not attempt to make any repairs on your own. Take a look at the procedures and environment which are required to carry out such expert data recovery and you will appreciate why you should not attempt data recovery on your own.

Typically data recovery for Seagate ST9100828A often requires:

• Class 100 clean room data recovery
• Removal of failed read/Write head stacks assembly
• Use of exact matching donor for recovery
• Replacing, and micro-recalibration of donor read/write head stack assembly
• Stabilization and testing of repaired disk assembly
• Full sector by sector binary extraction (often 3 to 4 passes required)
• File System analysis and repairs when required
• Data extraction
• File structure verification and repair
• Transfer data file to new media

SalvageData Recovery engineers have developed special technological processes and tools for replacing and cleaning of read/write heads and are very successful at performing Seagate ST9100828A recovery processes. We maintain an extensive inventory of Seagate drives and  parts allowing for the fastest possible recovery of your failed Seagate ST9100828A.