How much did it cost? My 4TB seagate is making a clicking noise. I only paid $100 dollars for this thing, and I don't feel too comfortable paying upwards $200 dollars to get repairs done on it. It mostly just houses digital copies of all my movies. And although I can just re-download or rip the movies off my DVDs again, I'd prefer just to get the hard drive started back up again so I can backup my digital copies somewhere else. It would be so much faster. But I don't want to spend a ton of money to do this, especially not for a cheap Seagate that only cost $100 dollars for a brand new one.
ok i fail to understand why the seagate antagonism, i have a seagate barracuda and it hasnt failed me ever i even have one from 1993 and still works perfectly
@@Wolfrich666 It's simple, they fail a lot. If yours didn't die you are just lucky. In the shops I worked it's always the same pattern. Dead hard drives go like this Seagate > Samsung > Maxtor > WD > Hitachi I don't know about Seagate now but 2000s Seagate was awful.
important to note, that even at a 10% insane failure rate, your drive would be fine 9/10 times, so singular positive experience in hdd terms means nothing. multiple negative experiences mean much, even though a reputation like seagate doesn't come out of no where. they are known to be the crappier option. i mean western digital literally sold and kinda still sells suicide drives. drives that had set load/unload timers set to 12 seconds with 300000 load/unload cycles being the maximum the heads are designed for, so they created consumer drives, that would literally kill themselves over time, BUT STILL seagate seems to be the crappier option. seagate nowadays even dares to sell SMR drives to unkonwing consumers, which by nature have higher failure rates and are more sensible to vibrations. and on top of that have massively slower continuous write speeds. they don't mention SMR (shingled magnetic recording) anywhere on the drives they sell marketing wise, like a lot of their mobile line. so seagate is shit, western digital (owning hgst btw) is shit, but seagate is more shit than western digital, if that makes sense :D
@michtoppien666 well we have limited data to go on, BUT i am for the hgst hms5c4040ble640 having a 0.45% anualized failure rate in a server environment. www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q1-2019/ only issue is, that that 4 TB isn't produced for a while now :D i got 2 of those and 1 of the same line (ale instead of ble), they are whisper quiet on random access and in general, making them great media drives, BUT not produced anymore. i honestly can't tell u, what a good drive is nowadays, the way i see it now is to avoid the utter shit or super loud drives (most enterprise drives) and look at what's left from western digital/hgst (same company). the drive i got like yesterday was a WD MY BOOK 10 TB drive costing about 200 euros, given that the difference between those or more expensive WD drives is kinda non existent or very minor, people buy specific external drives and take the internal 3.5 inch drive out of them and use them, if nothing else they are at least cheap (33% or more cheaper than internal drives), high capacity and PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording). u may have to use a certain molex to sata power connector instead of direct sata power power from the psu, given how the drive is setup, which is what i had to do, but to me at least it's still worth it.
After a little practice, I did exactly what you showed (stuck heads on an external 3,5'' seagate 500gb) for a customer, saved 80% of their data and for the first time I got paid for it. Just wanted to leave a THANK YOU.
there is not much to explain, other than what you see in the video. I just carefully opened the drive and positioned my hands as shown in the video, in order to give a small turn in the platters (with one hand) while moving the heads back into the parking space (with the other hand). Watch carefully the video and believe me, I didn't do anything different other than what's shown there :) That's all you need to do. If the problem is "stuck heads on the platters", after you perform the above procedure, (and close the drive, of course) the drive will probably start and you should be able to retrieve a good amount of data. Just keep in mind that you should not experiment on how many times the drive will start: You do the above procedure, connect the drive and treat it like it's the absolute LAST time it will turn on. Don't expect it to last. Retrieve what you can, as fast as you can, because the drive's life is in a fast countdown !
Thank you for your thorough instructions and taking the time to explain in detail. I was able to stop the beeping on my Seagate slim portable drive and now my computer recognizes device. This is my first attempt doing this; I was almost going to throw away the drive thinking it was broken.
Good show, Steve. I actually just turned down a Rosewood recovery due to not being able to source a donor for it right now. Did a Passport 2TB head swap a little while ago, saved 1.8TB of baby pictures and family data. It's high stakes and very unforgiving but the results are worth more than the money you make. I have been waiting a long time to see Rossmann Group get into DR, excited that it is finally coming to fruition. I started my own endeavors a few years ago and have learned a lot since then, Data Recovery is a really tight industry, a lot of secrecy, glad to see people like you all and Erkin and Amirbir are finally wedging it open, I have been laboring to spread awareness myself as too many people assume their data is toast and that recovery is something only available to big corporations. I have personally saved both wedding pictures and essential fire engine inspection reports in my time doing recovery, it's a necessary evil, but I'm glad to be able to offer it to people. Been a long time fan of y'alls work, a toast and salute from Greenville, South Carolina!
Yay! PC3000! From Russia with love and generous price! (well, it's still a few thousand $, but with amount of reverse engineering required it's really cheap)
What do you mean? You use a comb to keep them seperated, put them under a microscope and check for visual damage. Broken wires, cracked or dislodged sliders, deformed coils, things of that nature. If they don't look perfect, they're defective/damaged.
Generally you don't "inspect the heads." If your data is important enough to pay hundreds of dollars to retrieve, or attempt recovery yourself, you replace everything. You're already opening it up, so replace the arms/heads regardless. You would have to remove them to inspect them, so regardless of the outcome of that inspection, don't of the old ones back in. Even if it's a 99.9% chance they're fine, why chance it. You've already taken them out, and there's a 0.1% chance they're bad.
It's actually pretty easy to unstick a stuck hdd. While I'll have to agree that you shouldn't open up hard drives, I personally have never once had a previously opened one fail down the line because it had been opened. The only really good advice is DO NOT touch the platters themselves, as this WILL damage your data. Just opening the drive and turning the platters by means of turning the hub will not in itself damage data (unless the heads have actually gouged into the surface of the platter, in which case the heads are probably screwed anyway) As for the thing about getting dust on the platters, I've nevr found this to be a problem, as long as you don't do this in a dusty environment, and obviously don't leave the drive open for any longer than absolutely necessary. Remember that the disc spins fast (5400rpm or higher) so any loose dust on the surface is going to be thrown right off the disc surface by centripetal force, and will get captured by the dust filter which is in there for this exact purpose. I had to unstick the hard drive on my old laptop around nine years ago, and while I did do data recovery on the drive after it was runing again, that very same hdd is back in the same laptop (which is in almost daily use on my workbench, doing everything from functioning as an audio oscilloscope/logic analyser, usb microscope display and ebay parts ordering machine), and nine years on, the very same hdd is still working without any issues whatsoever, so although in all honesty I wouldn't recommend opening up a hard drive unless it's a last resort, it's comforting to know that if you're careful, this can be a long-term fix. But DO back up the data on it as a precaution, just in case. Interestingly, this problem only seems to affect laptop hard drives. I'm sure that sticktion could happen on a 3.5" hdd I've never seen one myself with this same problem. I guess the tiny spindle motors in laptop drives simply don't have enough torque available to pull a sticking platter away from the heads
my first 3.5" HDD had this problem. But unlike other HDDs (It's a Maxtor DiamondMax 23) there is no parking position outside the disk and it's physically impossible to get the arm there. Instead, it looks like the parking position is in the center of the disk, since that is what got my drive spinning again. So far no luck with data recovery tho. The data does show up (not always) when connceted by a USB 3.0 - SATA adapter. But trying to access it freezes the windows explorer and any other program trying to read this drive.
The old school solution for 5-1/4 half height drives was to stand it on it's side, lift it an inch or two on one corner, and let it fall on it's side onto a towel. The sudden change in rotational inertia would often un-stick the heads by shifting the platters. No need to open the drive and introduce dust. This may work on these smaller drives too. Goal is to get the platters to rotate to a new resting position. Do not drop on the bottom or top. You don't want to bounce the heads on the platters.
@@urlocaltokz4863 Stand it on a corner. Let it rotate and fall on it's side. In falling it rotates. In landing it stops rotation of the case, but the platters due to momentum continue to rotate and free stuck platters. Normally it is not a good idea to drop a hard drive. This may recover a broken hard drive for data recovery and it not a long term fix.
If you want to learn how to do this, use this video to help you practice on dead drives that do not have critical data on them. This is how everyone starts - on bad drives that do NOT have either their own, or customer data on them. If it is data you don't care too much about losing, try it out. If it is data you care about losing, bad idea.
@@capofantasma97 I don't think you should ever do this to "avoid buying another one". The purpose of this process is to get the drive working for long enough to retrieve the data, after which you should regard the drive as scrap.
I was thinking the same thing. They want you to take it to them so they can make money off of you and they want you to watch the video so UA-cam can pay them money from you watching the video. Smh. i opened and fixed mine perfectly fine and I actually watch someone else's video all the way thru on how to do it. Just because he made that comment.
You have to learn by try end errors to learn. These recovery technitians with experience did not came from nowhere. ;-) Good video. I learnt something.
@@deadalkabob backblaze list. Less than 1% fails from seagate. Wd not in use anymore, owner of the record of more fails in history of backblaze. If u had a seagate fail on you, it was just a faulty one. The end.
Good video steve Great info Now I know when I get beeping That means get another hard drive and start transferring immediately Cuz the head could get stuck ✊🏿
I put all my family pics on one of these pieces of garbage and it quit working. Hope to have it recovered someday. I'm in Canada, but would consider sending it to you guys. Great video!
Have you had any customers ship hard drives from overseas via surface mail in paper wrapped packages asking if you can recover their external hard drives? There must be at least 1?
This is fantastic. Most people dont show and explain how to do it because of data. I have a wiped harddrive that has head issues, and I wanted to see if I could use it once again.
Thx for the video, I’ve heard about a beeping HD BEFORE; But I’ve never experienced it ; And no one ever explained what it’s all about; It’s definitely better to have knowledge before hand, So that one can make informed decisions and not waste time and monies; Again many thanks 👍
Thank you so much for this video. I managed to unstuck the head, everything worked afterwards and I was able to copy all of the data to another drive. It saved me 1900€ a data recovery company in my town wanted to charge me for it, their "analysis" (they didn't open the drive) said that there is damage on the magnetic drive and there are bad blocks. Well...
I've read that "if you're data is crucial don't try this yourself". Possibly a better way of looking at this scenario is that if your data really were "crucial" you'd have backups. Multiple backups. Amazon S3 bucket/Google Drive/Dropbox/iCloud/USB drive/RAID/whatever there aren't really any excuses.
My easyest recovery when I just flipped upside down the hard drive and the system recognized it. If you don't want to loose your data I recommend to use WD Blue, those drives amazing and mostly easy to recover at home (sorry Steve :). Ones it took 8 days to save the data from a 320GB drive, but the end 10 years of photos and videos recovered fine. I use simple PC and Linux, but there are some pretty stupid devices wich copy the data bit by bit one drive to another, it can be handy if you dealing with bad sectors only. By the way with these prices not worth the risk to try at home. I remember when recovery cost a fortune, then start at $1000, than $500, than $300 and now its $100.
Many people are trashing Seagate but back when I bought my two drives around 2008 they had good reviews... My 250 gb Seagate Go beeps but I still have my 1 tb Seagate and my desktop has a 250 gb Seagate since 2014, used all day long every day.
I get defective seagate microdrivers for laser mirrors, often they have stuck head but 80% of the time a good finger flick when powered on unsticks the heads from the platter. No I am not advising to hit your hard drive when powered to unstick heads, I just found it interesting it had such a high success rate with microdrivers.
Thanks to you, i repaired a hard disk from my office with sensitive data. The hard disk was the same model, so this video is exactly what i was looking for.
@@xenonram Yep, I was only thinking about electronic chip layers. Yes, Silicone is used for sealing, duh. Too much moter-boating last light ;-) I stand corrected. Thanks.
Perfectly polished metal can sometimes spontaneously weld themselves together. It's a strange phenomenon but it is definitely a real thing. This is a regular problem under vacuum conditions and has been an issue on the International Space Station a few times over the years. While hard drives do not use vacuum (well, not the consumer ones anyway), you can still get similar (though far weaker) welds ocurring. Fortunately they are fairly easy to unstick but yes it is surprising how strong they can get
8:16 "You never take a shortcut with data recovery." Excellent point. Unlike with other repairs, you can't get replacement data if you damage the platters badly. You only have one shot.
It work's with seagate game drive ps4, 4tb usb??? I hear specific noise, ps4 na pc doesn't see a drive, but in computer menager and application like seatools i see it. I have had it since 2018 and it never collapsed and now it suddenly stopped working.
The pinned comment from Mytheroo and expecialy the comments from Louis channel later are good. Ive spend many hours trying to learn and recover data. the older the drive (as in 20 years old or older) are "easier" than newer. Firmware, tiny parts, more complicated IC and firmware tricks to get new heads or pcb to read the data. Realy realy old drives, like a few Kilogram heavy IBM mainframe ones can maybe recovered using a ossilioscope and some fpga in a weekend, these modern babies are a work of art. using Jtag to find multiple cores in the controller, undocumented instructions, firmware both on eeproms and on the platters, alignment only found in the magnetic field.. I lost 20 drives due to experiments. no important data lost. 3 harddrives data lost because heads went into the platters because I did not know. a few laptop drives went total dead after I tried recovering data (I atleast got the 3 excel files the client wanted, but vacation photos where gone). With no money, I will be the last resort. Advice, go find a professional recovery company. only if thats too expensive and you or the person with the sick hdd would love you give it a try (with guaranteed dead drive), go try learn. What those recovery companies have, is money for the right tools and get information from other recovery companies on what to do with a dead drive, how to proceed. its this "closed" community is paying for, getting your invested time and money back by sharing these details. Sure its sad its a "closed" community, but if you have money to get in, you can earn that money back by the repairs. And I dont blame them. DAMM too many people ask me how i fixed their machine for free, or if I can help recover another drive for them. Dude, you dropped your laptop, I did it for a free beer because you where cool. this is the X time and it costs me 3 hours to replace those parts and copy your data. Ow well, atleast I made some friends and got some stuff for free... but someone has to pay the rent, food and buy a new car. if you realy want and read all this way, follow this channel from Louis and maybe visit, register and go find experts on hddguru dot com. (bios-mods dot com for bios mods, hacks, fixed) and learn what Jtag, serial ports and hexediting is.
Louis, good tutorial, I hope that for someone it would be helpful. I have solved same issue with damn Seagates before, and unfortunately, those repair just gives time to backup the data. All drives died after some time.
I think that is always the case. You're "rebuilding" the drive in order to recover the data from it. As is the case to everyone except Apple, the data is always more important than the hardware.
3:22 Sir, this is very useful video, can you pls mention the tool name? I have opened all except the middle one because i dont have that particular screwdriver
i have a seagate from 1993, how is that still works? seriously i dont get it, i would be happy if you could elaborate more on the reasons why seagate shouldnt be trusted
This isn't a expensive or exclusive HDD. It's a budget, run of the mill HDD. Generally, more expensive HDDs are better. I can't think of a HDD where the more expensive one isn't better. You can find $120 HDDs that are not as good as a $110 HDD, but that's just retailer price fluctuations. Significant price differentials are what I'm talking about. A $300 HDD will be better than a $100 HDD.
I bought 2 3.5 inch 2tb Seagate hard disk drives for my home office server and they did this sound out of the box. I had to add a 30 second pre-time in the bios of the machine to let them finally spin up.
Hi man, thanks for the video. Could you please tell me what screwdrivers youre using to open it up? specially the star shaped only one located in the center, can´t find the right screwdriver!
O mrfg i did this and really worked. I am good at fixing things bit it did not wanted to move anything from the HDD i have, i have a Lot of precious data that i was not eage to lose it all.but i dont have the money to pay the data recovery service. Today i said fck it and worked, worried about nothing and you help me to save 300$. Thank you.
You mention that the job is normally $200. I was just given a quote that it would be minimum $500 - to a maximum of $1400 depending upon how it was broken. Regardless of whether it was 1 picture I needed recovered or the whole TB and I can't find anything cheaper where I live. So....yep
This is two years old, prior to the realization that at this price, not only would we be inundated with over 200 drives, but also have no budget to train or hire another person to handle them, or work out of a facility to fit said person. many wind up being bad heads, not just stuck heads as well, at which point this video's tactic no longer applies.
Listen to this advice as it is now 2024 and i had been searching for my old PC in my storage unit for a year and a half and finally found it and this same problem confronted me and i attempted this fix, it failed and I lost years of drivers and apps I developed and am just sick over it. Wish i had sent it to the professionals but hey, now i have something to keep me busy for the next couple of years. Yeah, data recovery is no joke and I am not laughing. You live and you learn. I have it all on USB flash drives that have been in storage in below zero weather and I have no faith in those cheap devices working. Bought one the other day to load an ISO on and the imported garbage failed to format from multiple devices. Everything is garbage these days.
That depends on the product right? just unscrew, remove, put new one there, screw and done. unless the firmware must match the platters, then swap eeprom. if even more screwed up manufacturer, swap main controller ic. if broken eeprom or controller ic, reprogram/flash them using scary rusian tools and tutorials :D easy if you know it, dificult for me, as I did not wanted to pay 100 dollar to Ukraine forum dude for tutorial. ow well, I forgot whats on the drive anyway, probably just windows with some steam games. School stuff was on my laptop at that time.
I dropped my hdd on my foot today, I know you said leave it to professional but I don't trust 'professional' at my place. So I went and did it myself like you show. Surprisingly it worked! Well it did stop working once in a while using usb-sata cable, but it constantly works when using 'dvd sata'-sata. Is there a way to check if my hdd recover completely write/read speedwise?
This is really insightful. I have a similar problem with my internal hard drive. I'm just not sure whether it's the hard drive or the power supply. I can read all the data on it and it works. But sometimes, especially when I start playing video games, it starts beeping, the screen freezes for split seconds and it already happend twice that my computer crashed. Then when I reboot, the drive keeps beeping constantly. I replugged the power supply and it works again until I start playing a game again. It drives me crazy and I don't know where to go from here.
I've always stopped short of removing the cover because of dust - I was shocked seeing the technician essentially only separated from the open drive by a sheet of acrylic. How can a normal person do this without access to hyper cleaned air? That being said I've rescucitated a few dead hard drives freezing them and or giving them gentle knock on the edge into the palm of my hand, long enough to retrieve the data they contained. Haven't had to do this in a while though, don't know it that would work with modern drives.
@@xenonram The hard drive I have access to, has company data on it, only it will not initialize and its making the same kind of clicks. So, if I am correct and it is a similar hard drive, I'd love to give it a go.
Why does it beep? What’s causing it? Is it a form of indication where the device is having errors? My sea gate 2TB external hard drive started beeping and is not flowing green anymore. My warranty ended and I don’t think I’m gonna get a new one from them. Going to try this and hopefully learn something.
I refuse to buy anything with a Seagate drive or put one in any system i'm building. In the last 20 years I've only had 2 hard drive failures and both drives were Seagate.
Thanks, excellent. Which way do the platters normally turn, the same direction, counterclockwise? I thought I remembered you saying to turn them opposite the normal direction in the first video but could be incorrect. RichE San Diego
Gogle Plus Sucks look at the head arm, the platter always travel from the root of the arm to the tip, so it creates a airflow cushion to float the head up.
@Louis Thanks! helped unraveling the mystery, how to open up a Seagate HDD Dell Inspiron 5570! managed to remove the T5s, but not the Pentalobe 4! what size in mm is that? which other screwdriver-s can unscrew it?
i now regret buying a seagate, i bought it like a year or two ago, tried to fix it myself, i'm taking it to a repair shop today and seeing if they can work things out, there's abosolutely not a speck of data on it but i really want it to work it's not like i can afford another hard disk right now
Steve recovered my Seagate 4 TB. Saved all my data and structure!!! 4 years worth of video and pictures.
How much did it cost? My 4TB seagate is making a clicking noise. I only paid $100 dollars for this thing, and I don't feel too comfortable paying upwards $200 dollars to get repairs done on it. It mostly just houses digital copies of all my movies. And although I can just re-download or rip the movies off my DVDs again, I'd prefer just to get the hard drive started back up again so I can backup my digital copies somewhere else. It would be so much faster. But I don't want to spend a ton of money to do this, especially not for a cheap Seagate that only cost $100 dollars for a brand new one.
How ca i send you the hdd
Where do i get the pentalobe 4 from?
Seagate - Creating Data Recovery Jobs Since We Stopped Caring
ok i fail to understand why the seagate antagonism, i have a seagate barracuda and it hasnt failed me ever
i even have one from 1993 and still works perfectly
@@Wolfrich666 It's simple, they fail a lot. If yours didn't die you are just lucky.
In the shops I worked it's always the same pattern. Dead hard drives go like this Seagate > Samsung > Maxtor > WD > Hitachi
I don't know about Seagate now but 2000s Seagate was awful.
important to note, that even at a 10% insane failure rate, your drive would be fine 9/10 times, so singular positive experience in hdd terms means nothing.
multiple negative experiences mean much, even though a reputation like seagate doesn't come out of no where.
they are known to be the crappier option.
i mean western digital literally sold and kinda still sells suicide drives.
drives that had set load/unload timers set to 12 seconds with 300000 load/unload cycles being the maximum the heads are designed for, so they created consumer drives, that would literally kill themselves over time, BUT STILL seagate seems to be the crappier option.
seagate nowadays even dares to sell SMR drives to unkonwing consumers, which by nature have higher failure rates and are more sensible to vibrations.
and on top of that have massively slower continuous write speeds.
they don't mention SMR (shingled magnetic recording) anywhere on the drives they sell marketing wise, like a lot of their mobile line.
so seagate is shit, western digital (owning hgst btw) is shit, but seagate is more shit than western digital, if that makes sense :D
@@cataria3903 so...in your opinion and experience what kind of drives are considered reliable then?
@michtoppien666
well we have limited data to go on, BUT i am for the hgst hms5c4040ble640 having a 0.45% anualized failure rate in a server environment.
www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-hard-drive-stats-q1-2019/
only issue is, that that 4 TB isn't produced for a while now :D
i got 2 of those and 1 of the same line (ale instead of ble), they are whisper quiet on random access and in general, making them great media drives, BUT not produced anymore.
i honestly can't tell u, what a good drive is nowadays, the way i see it now is to avoid the utter shit or super loud drives (most enterprise drives) and look at what's left from western digital/hgst (same company).
the drive i got like yesterday was a WD MY BOOK 10 TB drive costing about 200 euros, given that the difference between those or more expensive WD drives is kinda non existent or very minor, people buy specific external drives and take the internal 3.5 inch drive out of them and use them, if nothing else they are at least cheap (33% or more cheaper than internal drives), high capacity and PMR (perpendicular magnetic recording).
u may have to use a certain molex to sata power connector instead of direct sata power power from the psu, given how the drive is setup, which is what i had to do, but to me at least it's still worth it.
These data recovery series are a blessing. I have interest in HDDs for like 10 years and only now I can see how people do it profesionally.
After a little practice, I did exactly what you showed (stuck heads on an external 3,5'' seagate 500gb) for a customer, saved 80% of their data and for the first time I got paid for it.
Just wanted to leave a THANK YOU.
Will you elaborate how u did and any tips for because mine's the same drive and same problem
there is not much to explain, other than what you see in the video. I just carefully opened the drive and positioned my hands as shown in the video, in order to give a small turn in the platters (with one hand) while moving the heads back into the parking space (with the other hand).
Watch carefully the video and believe me, I didn't do anything different other than what's shown there :)
That's all you need to do.
If the problem is "stuck heads on the platters", after you perform the above procedure, (and close the drive, of course) the drive will probably start and you should be able to retrieve a good amount of data.
Just keep in mind that you should not experiment on how many times the drive will start: You do the above procedure, connect the drive and treat it like it's the absolute LAST time it will turn on. Don't expect it to last. Retrieve what you can, as fast as you can, because the drive's life is in a fast countdown !
Thank you for your thorough instructions and taking the time to explain in detail. I was able to stop the beeping on my Seagate slim portable drive and now my computer recognizes device. This is my first attempt doing this; I was almost going to throw away the drive thinking it was broken.
This is a real HD repair. Unlike a lot of misleading content on the internet and on YTb. Excellent work friend, congratulations for the dedication.
Good show, Steve. I actually just turned down a Rosewood recovery due to not being able to source a donor for it right now. Did a Passport 2TB head swap a little while ago, saved 1.8TB of baby pictures and family data. It's high stakes and very unforgiving but the results are worth more than the money you make. I have been waiting a long time to see Rossmann Group get into DR, excited that it is finally coming to fruition. I started my own endeavors a few years ago and have learned a lot since then, Data Recovery is a really tight industry, a lot of secrecy, glad to see people like you all and Erkin and Amirbir are finally wedging it open, I have been laboring to spread awareness myself as too many people assume their data is toast and that recovery is something only available to big corporations. I have personally saved both wedding pictures and essential fire engine inspection reports in my time doing recovery, it's a necessary evil, but I'm glad to be able to offer it to people. Been a long time fan of y'alls work, a toast and salute from Greenville, South Carolina!
Yay! PC3000! From Russia with love and generous price! (well, it's still a few thousand $, but with amount of reverse engineering required it's really cheap)
Damn expensive...pc3000
that software and hardware is a shit load of money dude.. ofcourse if you are doing this job you need it.
Steve I must say that was fast & clean video. I would love to see how do you inspect the head's? Tnx
What do you mean? You use a comb to keep them seperated, put them under a microscope and check for visual damage. Broken wires, cracked or dislodged sliders, deformed coils, things of that nature. If they don't look perfect, they're defective/damaged.
Generally you don't "inspect the heads." If your data is important enough to pay hundreds of dollars to retrieve, or attempt recovery yourself, you replace everything. You're already opening it up, so replace the arms/heads regardless. You would have to remove them to inspect them, so regardless of the outcome of that inspection, don't of the old ones back in. Even if it's a 99.9% chance they're fine, why chance it. You've already taken them out, and there's a 0.1% chance they're bad.
It's actually pretty easy to unstick a stuck hdd. While I'll have to agree that you shouldn't open up hard drives, I personally have never once had a previously opened one fail down the line because it had been opened. The only really good advice is DO NOT touch the platters themselves, as this WILL damage your data. Just opening the drive and turning the platters by means of turning the hub will not in itself damage data (unless the heads have actually gouged into the surface of the platter, in which case the heads are probably screwed anyway)
As for the thing about getting dust on the platters, I've nevr found this to be a problem, as long as you don't do this in a dusty environment, and obviously don't leave the drive open for any longer than absolutely necessary. Remember that the disc spins fast (5400rpm or higher) so any loose dust on the surface is going to be thrown right off the disc surface by centripetal force, and will get captured by the dust filter which is in there for this exact purpose.
I had to unstick the hard drive on my old laptop around nine years ago, and while I did do data recovery on the drive after it was runing again, that very same hdd is back in the same laptop (which is in almost daily use on my workbench, doing everything from functioning as an audio oscilloscope/logic analyser, usb microscope display and ebay parts ordering machine), and nine years on, the very same hdd is still working without any issues whatsoever, so although in all honesty I wouldn't recommend opening up a hard drive unless it's a last resort, it's comforting to know that if you're careful, this can be a long-term fix.
But DO back up the data on it as a precaution, just in case.
Interestingly, this problem only seems to affect laptop hard drives. I'm sure that sticktion could happen on a 3.5" hdd I've never seen one myself with this same problem. I guess the tiny spindle motors in laptop drives simply don't have enough torque available to pull a sticking platter away from the heads
@sbcontt YT mildly dropping it might cause it to be worst
my first 3.5" HDD had this problem. But unlike other HDDs (It's a Maxtor DiamondMax 23) there is no parking position outside the disk and it's physically impossible to get the arm there. Instead, it looks like the parking position is in the center of the disk, since that is what got my drive spinning again. So far no luck with data recovery tho. The data does show up (not always) when connceted by a USB 3.0 - SATA adapter. But trying to access it freezes the windows explorer and any other program trying to read this drive.
My hard drive is spinning again but is not registering it on my xbox, I’m gonna try and let it do whatever it needs to do overnight.
The old school solution for 5-1/4 half height drives was to stand it on it's side, lift it an inch or two on one corner, and let it fall on it's side onto a towel. The sudden change in rotational inertia would often un-stick the heads by shifting the platters. No need to open the drive and introduce dust. This may work on these smaller drives too. Goal is to get the platters to rotate to a new resting position. Do not drop on the bottom or top. You don't want to bounce the heads on the platters.
surprisingly worked on my 2TB Seagate backup slim
thanks bro
man it worked thank you😭😭
I don’t get it please help
@@brammie155what do you do I don’t get it
@@urlocaltokz4863 Stand it on a corner. Let it rotate and fall on it's side. In falling it rotates. In landing it stops rotation of the case, but the platters due to momentum continue to rotate and free stuck platters. Normally it is not a good idea to drop a hard drive. This may recover a broken hard drive for data recovery and it not a long term fix.
"You should NEVER attempt to fix your own drive unless you're a technician". Makes video how to fix your own drive.
My guess is that this a tutorial for people that want to know how people do their job. That, or it's supposed to be a tutorial for technicians.
If you want to learn how to do this, use this video to help you practice on dead drives that do not have critical data on them. This is how everyone starts - on bad drives that do NOT have either their own, or customer data on them.
If it is data you don't care too much about losing, try it out.
If it is data you care about losing, bad idea.
@@rossmanngroup Unfortunatley I've already burned that bridge.
@@capofantasma97 I don't think you should ever do this to "avoid buying another one". The purpose of this process is to get the drive working for long enough to retrieve the data, after which you should regard the drive as scrap.
I was thinking the same thing. They want you to take it to them so they can make money off of you and they want you to watch the video so UA-cam can pay them money from you watching the video. Smh. i opened and fixed mine perfectly fine and I actually watch someone else's video all the way thru on how to do it. Just because he made that comment.
To be honest, I am really starting into getting trashed HDD´s and try to do something with them. Thank you so much for inspiration
Dead HDs are make great speakes
You have to learn by try end errors to learn. These recovery technitians with experience did not came from nowhere. ;-) Good video. I learnt something.
Yeah but you learn using donor drives or get some old crappy used drives, not on your own (or someone else's) data.
@@vgamesx1 vgamesx1 gets it.
@@vgamesx1 thankfully there is no shortage of obsolete HDDs in the world.
9:05 - "Whaddya know, it shows up perfectly fine"
*Error* - _happens_
"uhhh... just ignore that...."
Oh look, another broken Seagate drive. How surprising!
Search "wd hdd fail" there you go fanboy
@@FedeSkillArg still fails less than a damn seagate
@@deadalkabob backblaze list. Less than 1% fails from seagate. Wd not in use anymore, owner of the record of more fails in history of backblaze. If u had a seagate fail on you, it was just a faulty one. The end.
@@FedeSkillArg precisely the external seagate drives those are terrible .
i wish i knew this before buying one...:/
Good video steve
Great info
Now I know when I get beeping
That means get another hard drive and start transferring immediately
Cuz the head could get stuck ✊🏿
I put all my family pics on one of these pieces of garbage and it quit working. Hope to have it recovered someday. I'm in Canada, but would consider sending it to you guys. Great video!
Steve needs to work on his shilling.
Have you had any customers ship hard drives from overseas via surface mail in paper wrapped packages asking if you can recover their external hard drives? There must be at least 1?
This is fantastic. Most people dont show and explain how to do it because of data. I have a wiped harddrive that has head issues, and I wanted to see if I could use it once again.
Thx for the video,
I’ve heard about a beeping HD BEFORE;
But I’ve never experienced it ;
And no one ever explained what it’s all about;
It’s definitely better to have knowledge before hand,
So that one can make informed decisions and not waste time and monies;
Again many thanks 👍
Thank you so much for this video. I managed to unstuck the head, everything worked afterwards and I was able to copy all of the data to another drive.
It saved me 1900€ a data recovery company in my town wanted to charge me for it, their "analysis" (they didn't open the drive) said that there is damage on the magnetic drive and there are bad blocks. Well...
I have managed to recover 99% of the data form the exactly same hard drive, same problem few months ago. Good job there
Ion know what I'm doing but he'll he made it so easy that I managed not to damage anything because of how detailed it is thanks man!
For half of the video I was thinking that Louis was having a cold...
This is not only excellent to know, it's a service I desperately need. I'm call you guys tomorrow (Jan 2020). Cheers.
I've read that "if you're data is crucial don't try this yourself". Possibly a better way of looking at this scenario is that if your data really were "crucial" you'd have backups. Multiple backups. Amazon S3 bucket/Google Drive/Dropbox/iCloud/USB drive/RAID/whatever there aren't really any excuses.
My easyest recovery when I just flipped upside down the hard drive and the system recognized it.
If you don't want to loose your data I recommend to use WD Blue, those drives amazing and mostly easy to recover at home (sorry Steve :). Ones it took 8 days to save the data from a 320GB drive, but the end 10 years of photos and videos recovered fine.
I use simple PC and Linux, but there are some pretty stupid devices wich copy the data bit by bit one drive to another, it can be handy if you dealing with bad sectors only.
By the way with these prices not worth the risk to try at home. I remember when recovery cost a fortune, then start at $1000, than $500, than $300 and now its $100.
Many people are trashing Seagate but back when I bought my two drives around 2008 they had good reviews... My 250 gb Seagate Go beeps but I still have my 1 tb Seagate and my desktop has a 250 gb Seagate since 2014, used all day long every day.
ALSO I know this is obvious but I'll say it anyway, After you have the faulty drive functioning, just copy all the data from it and use a new drive.
Very informative and hydrating.
I always figured the hard drive was swearing for not being made as a SSD but was sensoring itself with the beeps
Thank you for the video! I would like to start to get into data recovery and practice on some already broken drives. This is helpful knowledge.
I get defective seagate microdrivers for laser mirrors, often they have stuck head but 80% of the time a good finger flick when powered on unsticks the heads from the platter. No I am not advising to hit your hard drive when powered to unstick heads, I just found it interesting it had such a high success rate with microdrivers.
Now that was a label of complete disrespect! Only difference being that it's not near impossible to remove :p
im using 'keep alive' to deal with my external HDs chirping, cos mine are not beeping . but they chirp if i dont use the tool.
What was the other screwdriver that you used for the middle screw? P something 4? Trying to find one.
Thanks to you, i repaired a hard disk from my office with sensitive data. The hard disk was the same model, so this video is exactly what i was looking for.
i know this is old video but you helped me figure out why my buddies external drive is having issues its doing the same type of beeping thank you
Louis, you should have pixelated the platter. I could see some of the embarrassing stuff stored on there!
Yes tysm! My hard drive has family photos and mp3s and it’s fixed! My cousin works with hard drives sometimes.
Loving these DR videos :) Greetings from a small DR lab in Brazil.
What a trash decision, to not have hermetically sealed drives to save 0.5 cents
@kerryithm2 *Silicon, not Silicone. Silicone is used in tits.*
not intended to ever be serviced....; who the hell works on $50-$100 drives? :)
@@mdd1963 you've missed the point here
@@kyledailey Nope. Silicone is used as a sealant. Which is what his comment is about. (Using silicone to seal the HDD.) Silicon is used in microchips.
@@xenonram Yep, I was only thinking about electronic chip layers. Yes, Silicone is used for sealing, duh. Too much moter-boating last light ;-) I stand corrected. Thanks.
Those heads can really stick to the drive surface, I haven't done a recovery but I've pulled apart junk drives with stuck heads and it surprised me.
Perfectly polished metal can sometimes spontaneously weld themselves together. It's a strange phenomenon but it is definitely a real thing. This is a regular problem under vacuum conditions and has been an issue on the International Space Station a few times over the years. While hard drives do not use vacuum (well, not the consumer ones anyway), you can still get similar (though far weaker) welds ocurring. Fortunately they are fairly easy to unstick but yes it is surprising how strong they can get
8:16 "You never take a shortcut with data recovery." Excellent point. Unlike with other repairs, you can't get replacement data if you damage the platters badly. You only have one shot.
It work's with seagate game drive ps4, 4tb usb??? I hear specific noise, ps4 na pc doesn't see a drive, but in computer menager and application like seatools i see it. I have had it since 2018 and it never collapsed and now it suddenly stopped working.
I have tried today with a Seagate and it works fine!! Thank you!! 😉😉
Did it by myself. Feeling very proud of me :)
The pinned comment from Mytheroo and expecialy the comments from Louis channel later are good. Ive spend many hours trying to learn and recover data. the older the drive (as in 20 years old or older) are "easier" than newer. Firmware, tiny parts, more complicated IC and firmware tricks to get new heads or pcb to read the data. Realy realy old drives, like a few Kilogram heavy IBM mainframe ones can maybe recovered using a ossilioscope and some fpga in a weekend, these modern babies are a work of art.
using Jtag to find multiple cores in the controller, undocumented instructions, firmware both on eeproms and on the platters, alignment only found in the magnetic field.. I lost 20 drives due to experiments. no important data lost. 3 harddrives data lost because heads went into the platters because I did not know. a few laptop drives went total dead after I tried recovering data (I atleast got the 3 excel files the client wanted, but vacation photos where gone). With no money, I will be the last resort. Advice, go find a professional recovery company. only if thats too expensive and you or the person with the sick hdd would love you give it a try (with guaranteed dead drive), go try learn. What those recovery companies have, is money for the right tools and get information from other recovery companies on what to do with a dead drive, how to proceed. its this "closed" community is paying for, getting your invested time and money back by sharing these details.
Sure its sad its a "closed" community, but if you have money to get in, you can earn that money back by the repairs. And I dont blame them. DAMM too many people ask me how i fixed their machine for free, or if I can help recover another drive for them. Dude, you dropped your laptop, I did it for a free beer because you where cool. this is the X time and it costs me 3 hours to replace those parts and copy your data. Ow well, atleast I made some friends and got some stuff for free... but someone has to pay the rent, food and buy a new car. if you realy want and read all this way, follow this channel from Louis and maybe visit, register and go find experts on hddguru dot com. (bios-mods dot com for bios mods, hacks, fixed) and learn what Jtag, serial ports and hexediting is.
Louis, good tutorial, I hope that for someone it would be helpful. I have solved same issue with damn Seagates before, and unfortunately, those repair just gives time to backup the data. All drives died after some time.
I think that is always the case. You're "rebuilding" the drive in order to recover the data from it. As is the case to everyone except Apple, the data is always more important than the hardware.
3:22 Sir, this is very useful video, can you pls mention the tool name? I have opened all except the middle one because i dont have that particular screwdriver
i have scoured the internet and cant figure out what that tool is i cant tell what he is saying. but its also the one tool that i am missing lol
I think it's a Pentelope 4
This sounds like an apple internal repair video lol. “Only true professionals can fix these.”
Well, you do need a special repair station, that most people don't just "have", and is rather large.
I legitimately have no clue who this might be
You've all started to talk the same
Maybe start wearing different gloves
have you not watched the previous(his 1st one) video, it is really simple to go back and watch it 🙄
@Mytheroo he carries Louis around and breaks his torches lmao
Nitrile Gloves carton of 6x100pk color: Power Rangers.
Nice to see that Louis is giving some of his employees the chance to do videos here.
Vote with money, don't buy Seagate
Wd all the way
I had two go on me in the same system with in months of each other. Will never by them again.
@Gomam0n Anything can fail on an HDD. I personally don't touch or move mine when they are working.
i have a seagate from 1993, how is that still works? seriously i dont get it, i would be happy if you could elaborate more on the reasons why seagate shouldnt be trusted
@@Wolfrich666 I have had many of them. Many have failed. Were Not in use 24/7, not in hot environment. Older Pata were a bit more reliable
It's always the more expensive and exclusive ones that break
This isn't a expensive or exclusive HDD. It's a budget, run of the mill HDD. Generally, more expensive HDDs are better. I can't think of a HDD where the more expensive one isn't better. You can find $120 HDDs that are not as good as a $110 HDD, but that's just retailer price fluctuations. Significant price differentials are what I'm talking about. A $300 HDD will be better than a $100 HDD.
Please keep doing data recovery videos off all types !!! Hdds, ssds , nand and everything!!! You will growww believe me!!! I'm loving this content :)
Got to 6:06
Disconnected hard drive
Tossed is at carpeted floor (with purpose)
Reconnected
Now works
Thanks
I took my seagate into a shop today. I hope they can fix it like you
bro when i hear him say "dont try to open it up leave it to the pros" like shut up bro imma fix it for free myself LOL
Did u fix it?
I doubt they did lol by now they most likely have a new hard drive uwu
the way you swing those tweezers soooo close to the platter makes me squirm! LOL!
He's a pro at talking with his hands, he's Italian.
Loving the data recovery videos 😍😍😍😍😍
I bought 2 3.5 inch 2tb Seagate hard disk drives for my home office server and they did this sound out of the box. I had to add a 30 second pre-time in the bios of the machine to let them finally spin up.
Maybe your mobo isnt providing full power to the harddisks or psu is too weak when all systems go powerup?
Hi man, thanks for the video. Could you please tell me what screwdrivers youre using to open it up? specially the star shaped only one located in the center, can´t find the right screwdriver!
How do u prevent dust, hair or sweat from falling onto the platters? Do u open it in a clean room? Just curious. I don’t know much abt repairing.
Thank you for the video. What kind of screwdrivers did you use to remove the metal cover?
O mrfg i did this and really worked. I am good at fixing things bit it did not wanted to move anything from the HDD i have, i have a Lot of precious data that i was not eage to lose it all.but i dont have the money to pay the data recovery service. Today i said fck it and worked, worried about nothing and you help me to save 300$. Thank you.
You mention that the job is normally $200. I was just given a quote that it would be minimum $500 - to a maximum of $1400 depending upon how it was broken. Regardless of whether it was 1 picture I needed recovered or the whole TB and I can't find anything cheaper where I live. So....yep
This is two years old, prior to the realization that at this price, not only would we be inundated with over 200 drives, but also have no budget to train or hire another person to handle them, or work out of a facility to fit said person. many wind up being bad heads, not just stuck heads as well, at which point this video's tactic no longer applies.
Thanks for the tutorials as usual :D
Today I learned Porsche made hard drives.
They also did phones with huawei but keep doing watches, bags, glasses and shoes.
Overpriced trash, mostly.
@@MiGujack3 So, like Apple.
Listen to this advice as it is now 2024 and i had been searching for my old PC in my storage unit for a year and a half and finally found it and this same problem confronted me and i attempted this fix, it failed and I lost years of drivers and apps I developed and am just sick over it. Wish i had sent it to the professionals but hey, now i have something to keep me busy for the next couple of years. Yeah, data recovery is no joke and I am not laughing. You live and you learn. I have it all on USB flash drives that have been in storage in below zero weather and I have no faith in those cheap devices working. Bought one the other day to load an ISO on and the imported garbage failed to format from multiple devices. Everything is garbage these days.
Thanks for this educational video
Cool! Can you do a video on the HDD logic board repairs or replacement?
That depends on the product right? just unscrew, remove, put new one there, screw and done. unless the firmware must match the platters, then swap eeprom. if even more screwed up manufacturer, swap main controller ic. if broken eeprom or controller ic, reprogram/flash them using scary rusian tools and tutorials :D easy if you know it, dificult for me, as I did not wanted to pay 100 dollar to Ukraine forum dude for tutorial. ow well, I forgot whats on the drive anyway, probably just windows with some steam games. School stuff was on my laptop at that time.
I dropped my hdd on my foot today, I know you said leave it to professional but I don't trust 'professional' at my place. So I went and did it myself like you show. Surprisingly it worked! Well it did stop working once in a while using usb-sata cable, but it constantly works when using 'dvd sata'-sata. Is there a way to check if my hdd recover completely write/read speedwise?
Excellent. Exactly what I asked for! Now we need more >:)
Just out curiosity, were I to hand it in to get it fixed, how much would that cost?
This is really insightful. I have a similar problem with my internal hard drive. I'm just not sure whether it's the hard drive or the power supply. I can read all the data on it and it works. But sometimes, especially when I start playing video games, it starts beeping, the screen freezes for split seconds and it already happend twice that my computer crashed. Then when I reboot, the drive keeps beeping constantly. I replugged the power supply and it works again until I start playing a game again. It drives me crazy and I don't know where to go from here.
Backup drive immediately. Replace drive.
Awesome work Steve, only a nugget would attempt this on their own. Kindest regards. Joe.
Wow, With that kind of cheeping out I'm never buying, selling or recommending a Seagate 2.5" drive ever again.
I had this happen before it was beeping i took it out stopped using it I didn't know why until i seen your video thanks for info
I've always stopped short of removing the cover because of dust - I was shocked seeing the technician essentially only separated from the open drive by a sheet of acrylic. How can a normal person do this without access to hyper cleaned air? That being said I've rescucitated a few dead hard drives freezing them and or giving them gentle knock on the edge into the palm of my hand, long enough to retrieve the data they contained. Haven't had to do this in a while though, don't know it that would work with modern drives.
great...i literally scratched my drive all over for 30 minutes and opened it.
damn...should've watched this sooner
Is it possible I can fix this without ripping it apart, and without a technician
Smack it against the ground. That will free up the heads
Interesting to see something different. Thanks.
I was fixing disks which were spoiled by technicians and otherwise helpless disks. Very expensive!
I have access to a dead drive about that size and I think it has the same error.
One the drive's data should be erased and two this looks fun.
Thanks.
What do you mean, "the drives data should be erased"?
@@xenonram The hard drive I have access to, has company data on it, only it will not initialize and its making the same kind of clicks. So, if I am correct and it is a similar hard drive, I'd love to give it a go.
Why does it beep? What’s causing it? Is it a form of indication where the device is having errors? My sea gate 2TB external hard drive started beeping and is not flowing green anymore. My warranty ended and I don’t think I’m gonna get a new one from them. Going to try this and hopefully learn something.
Wish i saw this before opening my dead hard drive 😔 I had a bad feeling i would do no good. But maybe there could be a chance.
A Seagate drive? Having issues? Why I NEVER.
@starshipeleven I'm exaggerating.
I refuse to buy anything with a Seagate drive or put one in any system i'm building.
In the last 20 years I've only had 2 hard drive failures and both drives were Seagate.
Me too! Which brand do you use now?
@@moow950 Western Digital RED
Thanks, excellent. Which way do the platters normally turn, the same direction, counterclockwise? I thought I remembered you saying to turn them opposite the normal direction in the first video but could be incorrect.
RichE San Diego
Gogle Plus Sucks look at the head arm, the platter always travel from the root of the arm to the tip, so it creates a airflow cushion to float the head up.
Trowed away one because of this issue. Didn't know what to do, now I know. No one do that near my area
Hey, I'm looking for a monitor stand. Preferably something that cost over $998. Do you have something for me?
Apple roasted with sucess lmao
My x box 2 terabyte drive does the same sound omg tysm
@Louis Thanks! helped unraveling the mystery, how to open up a Seagate HDD Dell Inspiron 5570! managed to remove the T5s, but not the Pentalobe 4! what size in mm is that? which other screwdriver-s can unscrew it?
i now regret buying a seagate, i bought it like a year or two ago, tried to fix it myself, i'm taking it to a repair shop today and seeing if they can work things out, there's abosolutely not a speck of data on it but i really want it to work
it's not like i can afford another hard disk right now
At my old job, everyone had LaCie drives for time machine backups. I've heard that sound so often, it made me uneasy to hear it again...
Thank you so much. Worked like a charm.