Data Recovery Service

[JimInKS]

A question I had hoped I would never have to ask...

Does anyone have experience with a data recovery service?

Or a secret on getting Seagate to fix a Barracuda drive with SD15 firmware on it for free. I just had my first go round with Seagate tech support and their recovery service.

I am gearing up for round 2 tomorrow, but unfortunately I really need to get the data off of this disk.

As of now Seagate says minimum charge is $700.

 

[rclarke250]

There are a lot of easy instructions on how to recover and flash that drive to a new firmware level, and hopefully retain the data on the drive. I have had pretty good success for a client going through drive savers. but they are really expensive. But when you need 2.7 tb of data recovered about metal stress tests for Alcoa for gmc,honda,boeing and others, they can afford it. But I got to teach the client that a raid 50 is not infallible, and that hot spares are a good idea, and the big tape library next to the 10 node server, needs to be hooked up and run for the data back up to work....it was an expensive lesson to learn.

 

[goombawaho]

Our company uses Gillware when a customer's hard drive has gone bye bye. They have a good success rate and you don't have to pay until they "see" whether they can see your data on the drive.

http://www.gillware.com/

It's going to cost you in the realm of $500 - $700 depending on hard drive size, etc. So, Seagate is not BSing you in terms of cost. It's an expensive little outing.

Also, TotalRecall

 

[JimInKS]

Thanks for the info guys.

I have ordered an appropriate cable and am going to give one of the published procedures on resetting the internal buffer of the drive a try. I don't think I have much to loose. If that doesn't work then I will go for the data recovery.

I was annoyed at Seagate because there wasn't an option to even give the firmware update a try. It seems to me, that if they have a program to do a free firmware update on the drive I ought to be able to send them the drive, have it evaluated for a reasonable fee, and if a firmware upgrade corrects the issue it should be free. If it is not a firmware issue THEN I should have the option of spending the $700 for a full data recovery.

I was told that if I sent the drive in and they did a firmware update to fix the issue... still $700 minimum charge.

Of course, this was the first person I talked to.

 

[goombawaho]

You've got to understand - they make and sell hard drives. They don't really want to fiddle with firmware or reviving drives. The $700 quote was to make you go away - happy or not. They were probably going to farm it out to someone else.

 

[JimInKS]

Seagate actually owns a data recovery service. The reports I read said that was who repaired the drives.

Anyway, I am just a tiny tiny fish in the pond, but am no longer buying Seagate drives.

 

[goombawaho]

Well, that's where your $700 would be going - straight to their recovery company, directly bypassing any other technical attempts at reviving the drive.

I'm not sure you should blame Seagate. How old is the drive?? Did you flash the firmware and muck up the drive (if so, on your own initiative or on Seagate's advice)??? I'm all for blaming the right party.

 

[JimInKS]

Drive just failed. I had purchased some Seagate drives for another project that acted up and that is when I discovered the Seagate firmware issue. That was months ago.

So when this drive started acting the same way it jogged my memory. It's under warranty, was manufactured in 08.

This is a case where I discovered our desktop publishing person was storing files on her local drive and not the network. It's only a couple years worth of work It's not that they weren't putting anything on the network. They have a lot of stuff there, just not all of it. If they hadn't put anything on a network drive I am pretty sure I would have noticed that.

Normally I wouldn't expect Seagate to recover the data, but since they did it for some, it is a bit annoying that they won't own up to this one. To be fair I haven't really pressed the issue with them yet. Anyway, since it seems to be a well known issue, you would think they would have a program to at least give the firmware update a shot.

Anyway, I looked at Gillware. There automated estimate was $600 for recovery, $300 additional if clean room required, no payment if nothing is recovered. Then one of there reps called me and said it would probably be more like $1300. I guess the $600 and $300 figures were surcharges on top of the base rate.

 

[goombawaho]

The 2nd thing to do after getting your data recovered is to beat that person that wasn't storing on the network. Or get management to figuratively beat on them. Employees like that can really kill a company if, for example, it was all the QuickBooks or Peach Tree data for a small company.

It ain't cheap. That doesn't sound right though. When we send a drive into them through our company, we must get a better (volume discount) deal and pass that onto the customers. Because we had a guy that had hard drive failure in a 300GB drive and he got it done via us through Gillware for more like $600 complete.

Try Total Recall just for another comparison.