Seagate ST2000DM001 failure (board swap & recovery advice please)

Roady

Roady

Roady

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Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
Hereford
Hi guys

I had a friends Seagate External HDD here (SRD00F2) that contains a Seagate ST2000DM001 drive (the same model as sold here).

The drive wasn't purchased from OCUK and is still under Seagate warranty, but the data on it is important... Seagate state that the drive will be replaced under warranty, not repaired and offer no data transfer/recovery. The drive doesn't spin up or detect, when plugged into an external caddy I can see the power light dimming on the AC adaptor so I was 99% sure this drive has an IC board or drive motor problem.

OcUK kindly supplied me with part numbers and they are not quite identical and the FW version is different. As it was a very close match I bought one to swap the controller board to this faulty drive to attempt recover data/revive it.

Old 'faulty' drive:
MODEL: ST2000DM001
PN: 1CH164-571
FW: CC43
Date: 13163 Site: WU
Click to expand...

New working drive:
MODEL: ST2000DM001
PN: 1CH164-510
FW: CC27
Date: 14194 Site: SU
Click to expand...

According to the Seagate site this particular model of drive has several platter configurations, only through matching the model number, PN and FW are they compatible. I figured a £60 investment is the only option before discussing with my friend about sending it off for expensive (£300+) data recovery.

Swapping the board makes the old drive spin... But it is unrecognised by windows so I'm guessing the firmware isn't compatible with the older drive head. Anything else I can try before sending for recovery/replacement?

I've previously used Ontrack for recovery, but not for a number of years... Anyone else I should be going to in the UK?
 
All I'm going to say is send it off to a data recovery specialist and tell them exactly what you've done to the drive in your attempt at recovery. The more you mess about with harddrives when you're not quite sure what you're doing, the more chance you stand of corrupting the data and possibly even lose it for good.

HDD Guru forums are full of people messing with their drives with no real idea what they are doing and they are constantly being told to seek professional advice. Perhaps if you post there, they might recommend a local data recovery specialist.
 
Thanks darael for the advice, have posted on the HDD Guru forums.

I'm fairly sure what I'm doing (I understand the mechanicals in question and have successfully board swapped a few times before), was just trying to take a 'shortcut' to get a controller board! ;)

I'm still looking for a european source of control boards...
 
Roady said:
Thanks darael for the advice, have posted on the HDD Guru forums.

I'm fairly sure what I'm doing (I understand the mechanicals in question and have successfully board swapped a few times before), was just trying to take a 'shortcut' to get a controller board! ;)

I'm still looking for a european source of control boards...
Click to expand...
I hope you didn't think that I was implying you didn't know what you were doing. If you look on those forums, you can see how people have tried to recover their data and only make things worse - I was just trying to maximise the chances of your data recovery by pointing you in the right directions.

Although I'm not a member of the forums, I can see your thread as well as the replies - they know their stuff. ;)
 
They do, far in advance of what I've done before as most of the previous failures I've dealt with have been sector or partition related... Thanks for the recommendation!

Think I've found one of the TVS to be faulty (5V one) and my friend is not too concerned about getting a Seagate replacement (as I have a new replacement here from OCUK anyway) so I'm really in 2 minds about snipping the TVS off and (possibly) recovering the data by getting the drive working... Or sending the drive back to seagate for a replacement which I'll keep... Argh, choices! Obviously if I snip the TVS off I'll void the warranty! :(
 
Ok it was actually the 12V TVS...

I used a multimeter and instructions from here and removed the 12V TVS, the drive is now working (but obviously has no current protection anymore!). My friend is overjoyed and I'm now sourcing another external caddy (have a couple here) to use with the new drive I have and to recover her data.

ST2000DM001_TVS.jpg


The lower of the 2 Diodes reported 02.7 (5V) and the top one reported nothing (ie faulty).

I snipped it off, so the old disk now has no warranty for the seagate replacement, but at least my friend has her data! ;)
 
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