This Seagate hard drive recovery project had the model number ST1000DM003. It came in from a local customer that needed their user data recovered. The client had initially taken their dead drive to a computer repair shop to have it diagnosed, but the repair shop told them that the recovery process was beyond their capabilities.
Seagate Hard Drive Recovery
This particular repair shop used to recommend one of the big data recovery companies that required you to ship your drive out to their California lab and would give you a quote once it arrived. The quotes from these big companies generally start at around $800 and go up into the thousands. A drive like this one would usually receive a quote of about $1200 for the recovery process.
I went out to his particular repair shop and told them about my at-home cleanroom environment, my PC-3000 by Ace Labs, and my 10+ years of experience as a data recovery technician. They decided to start referring people to me as I was local, and as an added bonus their clients have been much happier with the affordable recovery service I am able to offer.
If you have a repair shop and are looking for a good data recovery lab to partner with when you receive projects that are beyond your abilities, please contact me to discuss the options I offer! I look forward to working with you.
ST1000DM003 Hard Drive Diagnosis
Once I received the Seagate hard drive, the first step was to diagnose the issue. The problem with the drive was reported as a “completely dead Seagate drive”. What usually makes a hard drive completely dead? Usually, a hard drive is completely dead when the PCB stops working for some reason. A PCB, or printed circuit board, is a hard drive’s main circuit board. It contains the electronic components that control the drive’s power.
If the PCB stops working, the drive can display all different kinds of symptoms. Everything from clicking to beeping to spinning up and not being recognized to a slow drive can be caused by a faulty PCB. But the most common symptom of a faulty PCB is a completely dead drive. This is because usually some sort of power surge or power issue occurred and caused the damage.
For the ST1000DM003 Seagate hard drive, the PCB is usually model 100664987 REV B. Thankfully these drives are plentiful on the market, so keeping the PCBs and donor drives in stock is very easy.
Swapping the 100664987 PCB
During the diagnosis of the hard drive, I found that the PCB was indeed bad. I had the same 100664987 REV B PCB in stock, so swapping it out only took a little while. For this PCB you can physically transfer the ROM chip from the original PCB to the new PCB. A ROM swap is almost always necessary.
Once the ROM swap was complete I installed the replacement PCB and tested the drive connected to my PC-3000. The drive spun up which is a great first sign when it was dead before, and it ID’d as well as getting ready. I was able to test the heads and the tests all passed perfectly.
Cloning the Seagate hard drive
Now that the drive was up and running and testing as good, I continued with configuring it for imaging. I always turn off all the features that might interfere with the cloning process. I set up my imager to complete a first quick pass and to skip over any areas of the drive that show any signs of trouble. For this hard drive, the first pass got 100% of the sectors recovered!
Completing the recovery
The final step for the Seagate ST1000DM003 data recovery was to run software that will go through all the recovered sectors and pull all the files from them. When the PCB has failed and caused a dead drive, there is almost never any corruption or problem with the files on the drive. That was true in this case, all the files came back perfectly with all names and folder structure intact. I moved all the recovered files over to the customer’s new drive and let them know it was ready to go!
Seagate Data Recovery Services
I have successfully recovered literally thousands of Seagate hard drives during my career as a data recovery technician. I bring years of experience and expertise to the recovery process and am proud of the quality of service I am able to provide. If you have a hard drive that needs data recovery, please check out my affordable data recovery price list, and just contact me with any questions! If you want to start the recovery process right now, please fill out my recovery form and I will get back to you with the next steps right away.
Drive info: Seagate Barracuda 1000GB, Model: ST1000DM003, PN: 9YN162-500, FW: CC4B, WWN 5000C5004D082226, DATE: 12415, Site: TK, Product of Thailand, Made in TH
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