These drives keep an unusually extensive amount of their own operating code in a reserved service area on the disk surface. When part of it becomes unreadable the drive spins perfectly and reports nothing — and the user data sits entirely untouched behind it.
A large share of these arrive spinning perfectly and reporting nonsense — wrong capacity, blank model string, or nothing at all. That is a service-area fault, and it is among the better outcomes available.
Seagate makes more of the drives that reach this laboratory than any other manufacturer, which is a function of market share rather than reliability. The failures are correspondingly varied, but two Seagate-specific patterns come up often enough to be worth knowing about.
The first is the 7200.11 generation, where a firmware fault causes the drive to report zero capacity or hang in a busy state. There is nothing physically wrong with those drives at all — the service area modules have become inconsistent, and the fix is firmware-level rather than mechanical.
The second is SMR. Later Barracuda models write overlapping tracks to increase density, and that makes imaging a failing SMR drive markedly slower than a conventional one. It affects how long a job takes rather than whether it succeeds.
Barracuda ST1000DM010, ST2000DM008, ST4000DM004 Desktop workhorses. Head degradation and stalling reads. The 2–4 TB models are SMR and image slowly.
7200.11 ST3500320AS, ST31000340AS The firmware generation. Detects as 0 GB or hangs busy. No physical damage; the service area needs repair.
IronWolf ST4000VN008 NAS duty, running continuously for years. Arrives worn rather than shocked — surface degradation across the platter.
SkyHawk ST2000VX008 Surveillance drives under constant write load. Frequently pulled from DVRs where the footage matters more than the disk.
Exos and Constellation Enterprise SAS and SATA out of servers and arrays. Usually array members rather than standalone failures.
Momentus and Barracuda 2.5-inch Laptop drives. Head crash after a drop is the usual presentation.
A Seagate donor has to match family, head configuration and firmware revision. Two drives with the same model number and capacity can carry different head maps, and a mismatch means the replacement stack cannot read the surface beneath it.
We hold Barracuda and Momentus generations in stock because this region sends them constantly. Where an older or less common family needs sourcing, that affects the timescale rather than the outcome, and you are told at the diagnostic rather than in week three.
Classic 7200.11 firmware fault if it is that generation. No physical damage — the service area modules need repair through vendor mode. Frequently a complete recovery.
Some Seagate drives ship with a rescue plan. It is worth checking your model and purchase date before paying anyone, including us. If it applies, use it.
Mechanical, and on a clock. Switch it off and do not power it up again to check. Every further attempt risks scoring the platter.
It makes imaging slower rather than less likely to succeed. Expect a longer turnaround on a failing 4 TB SMR drive than on a conventional one of the same size.
From £300 +VAT for a single drive, fixed in writing after the free 48-hour diagnostic. Array members from £500 +VAT.