Seagate is one of the two drive brands you are most likely to own: they come in desktop computers, tucked inside network attached storage (NAS) devices, or as Backup Plus or Expansion drives on your desk. If one of these fails, the good news is that Seagate drives are recovered every day; but you need to understand what typically goes wrong with Seagate drives, and one packing detail that Seagate external owners frequently miss.
Whether it is a Barracuda desktop drive, an IronWolf NAS drive or a Backup Plus external drive, a Seagate failure is usually due to either a mechanical fault or a build-up of bad sectors. In both cases, the drive can be recovered if it is imaged read-only rather than pushed to keep operating.
Seagate’s range covers most of the drives in everyday use. The Barracuda is Seagate’s mainstream desktop drive. The IronWolf line is designed for NAS boxes, and SkyHawk for CCTV recorders. The 2.5-inch drives housed in many laptops are Seagate, as are the very popular Backup Plus, Expansion and One Touch USB externals. And finally, Exos serves enterprise servers. Understanding which drive you have helps determine how best to recover it: a single Barracuda is generally a straightforward single-drive recovery, whereas a set of IronWolf drives from a NAS requires a RAID reconstruction, and the externals add another complication, encryption, covered below.
Like all traditional hard disk drives, Seagate’s fail in a handful of ways most people know about. Mechanical failure is the most common, and occurs when the read/write heads wear out or stick, or the motor seizes. When this happens the drive typically makes the tell-tale clicking or beeping sound while trying to start. Other drives degrade more quietly through an accumulation of bad sectors, which happens over time and results in freezes, slow file copies and files that won’t open: the early warning signs worth heeding. There is also the circuit board, which can be knocked out by a power surge. Whatever the cause, a physically failing drive should never be left running or cycled on and off repeatedly, because each time you allow this there is a greater chance of additional damage.
Here is how Seagate’s desk and portable models differ from others. Models such as Backup Plus and One Touch commonly have encryption enabled within the small bridge chip inside the housing. This is not encryption you set up; it is simply standard on these products. The practical result is that when you take apart the housing and connect the bare drive to another computer, it shows no readable format, because the decryption key resides within the housing you have removed. Therefore, for these products, do not shuck the drive: send the complete unit, allowing the data to be decrypted in its own hardware. If you are unsure whether your drive has this type of encryption, sending it whole is always the safest option.
Most Seagate failures can be recovered with the right handling. A drive that has failed is first repaired only as far as needed to read it (matched donor heads for a head crash, or a board repair for surge damage) and then imaged read-only, so your files can be rebuilt from a copy and the fragile original is not stressed any further. A single Seagate hard drive or external starts from £300 +VAT; an IronWolf NAS or RAID set starts from £500 +VAT. All jobs start with a free diagnostic and a fixed written quote, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data, so you are aware of what can be recovered and how much it will cost before anything goes ahead.
Yes, Seagate drives are recovered routinely, whether they are mechanically faulty (such as clicking heads or a seized motor), have an increasing number of defective sectors, or have suffered a board failure due to a voltage surge. The drive is repaired only as far as needed to read it, then imaged read-only, so we recover the files by reading back from the image. After a free diagnostic, a single Seagate drive is from £300 plus VAT.
No, please send us the whole unit. Seagate portable externals such as Backup Plus and One Touch commonly store data encrypted by the bridge within the enclosure, which means that when the bare drive is taken out of its housing it appears to be unformatted and cannot be recovered in isolation. Sending it as a complete unit allows us to decrypt the data in its original hardware.
Do not continue to use it, and do not keep power-cycling it. Clicks normally indicate a mechanical issue (worn or stuck heads), and each spin-up increases the risk of causing additional damage to the platters. There is nothing software can do for a clicking drive. Please switch it off and send it to us for read-only recovery; a single drive costs from £300 plus VAT.
Yes. We reconstruct sets of IronWolf drives from NAS systems or RAID arrays by creating read-only images of every disk, before rebuilding the array offline. All the disks should be sent together, labelled with their bay positions. Do not allow your NAS to rebuild onto a replacement drive first. NAS and RAID recoveries cost from £500 plus VAT.
An individual Seagate hard drive or external drive costs from £300 plus VAT, and an IronWolf NAS or RAID set from £500 plus VAT. Depending on what failed, we confirm the exact figure in a fixed written quote once we’ve completed a free diagnostic, and in most cases you only pay if we recover your data.
If your drive clicks, isn’t recognised or is a dead external, send it over and we’ll assess what can be recovered (Backup Plus devices need to come whole, please). Free diagnostic and fixed quote first.