Experience with Seagate's data recovery services for partitioned drive?
June 20, 2020 4:55 PM Subscribe
We dropped our external hard drive (Seagate Backup HUB). It now makes bad noises when I try and plug it in (and is also not recognized). I believe it's still under warranty, which seems to include "Rescue Data Recovery Services." I'm looking for tips, advice, and personal experience with this service. Will it matter if I had partitioned the device into multiple sections?
Some other info:
The device is 8TB, and I had it partitioned into four parts.
The disk had most of my wife's photos of our infant, so we're not thrilled about losing the data, but we're prepared for the possibility.
I've heard this service can be extremely expensive, which is why I'm interested in the fact that it might be built into my warranty. Is it a mistake to use this service?
My Mac wasn't recognizing the device as a memory device (not mounting), though when I went to the system report, it did recognize that the device was plugged in. Disk recovery did not recognize the device either. (I know not to plug it in again)
Would it make a difference to data recovery services if the device is partitioned or should this not matter? Any other advice/tips?
Some other info:
The device is 8TB, and I had it partitioned into four parts.
The disk had most of my wife's photos of our infant, so we're not thrilled about losing the data, but we're prepared for the possibility.
I've heard this service can be extremely expensive, which is why I'm interested in the fact that it might be built into my warranty. Is it a mistake to use this service?
My Mac wasn't recognizing the device as a memory device (not mounting), though when I went to the system report, it did recognize that the device was plugged in. Disk recovery did not recognize the device either. (I know not to plug it in again)
Would it make a difference to data recovery services if the device is partitioned or should this not matter? Any other advice/tips?
Best answer: The more you attempt to do anything with a drive that's physically damaged, the more likely you are to permanently damage the data on this drive, so at the very least stop plugging it into things if you want to recover data on it.
I don't have personal experience with Seagate's data recovery service plans, but a perusal of the Terms and Conditions says they don't cover damage due to collision, so you may not be able to use that coverage (which would presumably allow you to get recovery services "for free" under the terms of the plan), but it might be worth it to call them and ask.
Independent data recovery services will usually charge a few hundred for recovery, usually depending on the nature of the damage.
posted by Aleyn at 6:27 PM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
I don't have personal experience with Seagate's data recovery service plans, but a perusal of the Terms and Conditions says they don't cover damage due to collision, so you may not be able to use that coverage (which would presumably allow you to get recovery services "for free" under the terms of the plan), but it might be worth it to call them and ask.
Independent data recovery services will usually charge a few hundred for recovery, usually depending on the nature of the damage.
posted by Aleyn at 6:27 PM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]
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At this point, data recovery will most likely involve stripping down the drive in a clean room and transferring the platters into a similar drive or a specialised data recovery system. These days, I gather some recovery of drive-specific information from the failed drive's controller board may also be needed to make sense of the platters.
Once readable, the disk would be read out as a single continuous image. Partitions can be easily identified within that image, even if the partition table is unreadable. That really is the most trivial part.
The rest, unfortunately, is specialised and expensive work and I would be surprised if it is covered by any routine warranty, particularly for accidental damage as opposed to a manufacturing failure.
I'm sorry if this is bad news.
posted by automatronic at 5:34 PM on June 20, 2020 [1 favorite]