pakratjr,
I had the same problem and went online to ebay and got a PCB with the same number and firmware , cost about $ 30 or $ 40 - replaced the pcb on the drive , plugged it in and worked - got all my data . If you google PCB with your hard drive number ST4000DX001 it does come up . Might not work for you but worth a try compared to paying thousands .
best .

Flashguy. thanks. That is a thought I had as well. I am going to try to call them Monday just for kicks and see what they say.

Fenderbender, I actually called them today. They did sound promising. I need to call them again next week after I get the drive back from the first place. They will send a prepaid shipping label and will do a free evaluation. They are on the top of the list and seems like they will be about inline price wise as the first place.

bernborough, I almost just did that but I have read and was told by a few different people that that trick don't really work on most of the newer drives and would possibly cause more damage as the boards are supposedly "tuned" to the drive itself. I'm not entirely sure I really believe that but I didn't want to take the chance.

pakratjr,
They are right about the newer drives with the nvram chip , but the trick is to get the same model PCB board and take the chip from your broken hard drive PCB and put it on the new PCB board and put that on the broken hard drive .It is a quite simple procedure and if it works it will have saved you a LOT of money . To see how go to Youtube and look up Joseph DiGiovanni - very well explained and damn simple .
best .

A bit of a update for those that may be interested.

My drive is currently at drivesavers. They called me today and told me basically the same thing as the previous place so far which is the read/write head needs to be replaced to start with.

And a "new" hickup....a chip on the board appears to have been replaced...and kinda poorly...and does not seem to be the correct one for the drive. The chip is specific to that drive and that drive only.

I needed to call the previous place and hope they still had the original as they are not able to continue with the recovery without it.

Called the previous place, no record of messing with any chip and didn't know why they even would have. They had to call me back after they did some digging into things. When they did call back they left a message, I was told the drive was returned to me with all original parts but they did have a binary backup of the chip that they could send me and I could send to the new place and to call them back if I wanted the file. They also said they are guessing drivesavers is having the same issue with not being able access the firmware.

Called back the first chance I got, the guy was gone for the day...won't be able to get the file till sometime tomorrow.

Called drivesavers back and let them know, the info was passed to the tech, they are now waiting on me and I am waiting on the previous place....

The time and money estimate from drivesavers is 7-10 business days and $1900-$2400 IF they can figure out the chip thing.

At this point I have pretty much "settled" with my drive being lost. If by some huge miracle they are able to recover it then cool but sadly I am no longer holding out any hope. This is starting to get to be a clusterfuck feeling.

Another update....I guess...

Just cot a call from Drivesavers. They were NOT able to recover the drive. They mentioned again that whatever chip on the board was not the correct one and are not able to get around it and are not able to recover the drive because of it.

The previous place insists it is the correct one and their is nothing more they can do.

Drivesavers is sending the drive back and I should have it Monday or Tuesday.

Now I don't know what the F!*$ to do. I can't believe that their is no way to get around Seagates stupid locked s#*t.

Doing more searching for other places and the list is pretty thin. I found Ontrack and Fields. I THINK I called Ontrack already but can't remember. Their was one that I tried and lost confidence in due to fairly poor communications with, and I think it was them. A general search only comes up with home user software stuff and links to their website.

Fields....I called and talked to them. Told them what was up and they seemed "confident", but so did Drivesavers. BUT when I do a general search, I get a LOT of review type results that....are not all that comforting. BBB came up and gives them a F rating. Most reviews and sites that are listing them as bad are basically touting them as a scam.

I did get things set up for shipping with Fields, but...I don't know....

Man this SUCKS!

Well.....Drive has been sent for attempt number 3.

Went with Secure Data Recovery. Just got the call. $2300.

The Email...

"Diagnostics on your media are complete. Unfortunately the drive is in very severe condition and will require multiple part replacements.

The inside of the drive is contaminated with metallic dusting and debris. There is media damage present on the platters, which will force us to replace components more than once.

Please note that recoveries of the this magnitude may take 2-5 weeks to complete."


The work order....


"Diagnostic Summary:

Light Platter Damage
The read and write heads have completely failed and there is surface damage on the platters. The drive will need to be taken into the clean room and the heads will need to be swapped and the platters will then be imaged. Once the imaging process is complete the data can then be extracted. Typical turn around time for media damage cases is 2-5 weeks.

Please note this will be a partial recovery. Client understand this will be an as-is recovery and Secure Data Recovery will attempt the best results possible.

The end result will be your recovered data on an external drive which you can mount via USB or eSATA. Due to the amount of data per user notes copy time will vary depending on how much data is present on the failed media. We can extract certain files first if they are more critical as the full copying process can take several days depending on the amount and type of data.

*** Important note about the results ***
Secure Data Recovery Engineers will deliver the best recovery outcome commercially possible but due to the damage which the media sustained a full recovery is not achievable. The best possible results are recovered data with partial data loss. The Client understands that the expected result was communicated prior to acceptance of this Agreement."


Talking to them on the phone, the "light" platter damage means when they opened the drive their was a dusting of stuff in the drive and visual damage to the top platter. Basically the read/write heads hit the platters. It is unknown as to what the rest of them look like.

Because of that alone, they do not expect a full recovery. They can pretty much guarantee that "larger" files like movies and videos will most likely end up being corrupted if not gone completely. Not necessarily all of them, but "be prepared" as it were.

"Smaller" files like pictures and "document" types of stuff will probably bit a bit more lucky with, but even that is still not guaranteed ALL will be recovered.

Judging by the conversation in general about things, it is kinda sounding like one of the two previous places....basically did a piss poor job at things and possibly did a bit more damage than good.

Being that the second place never mentioned the damage....and along with a couple other "minor hickups", I am sort of leaning to them. I don't really know for sure tho.

YAY

I've been down this road a few times over the years, losing data for a variety of reasons. In some cases it was gone forever, in others I was able to use some of the free open source data recovery methods and was able to save some files while losing others...in the last unexpected hard drive crash, after getting a quote from the Geek Squad at the local Best Buy, it was more than I felt comfortable spending and while I was mulling it over I found out that one of my co-workers used to do computer related work when he served in the Marines and when I talked to him about it he was willing to give it a shot. I bought a brand new 4TB hard drive and he returned it, along with my old broken hard drive, loaded with all my data + several movies and music from his own collection, and charged me $40 but I happily gave him $75.

I haven't commented previously because I didn't have anything useful to add but I've been wincing as you post your updates because I've been there before and will most likely lose data again at some point, despite doing back-ups.

Thanks for taking the time to post your updates so that we can learn from your experiences. Really pulling for you and hoping for the best possible recovery outcome.

Modern Day, thanks. I wish mine was that easy

So another "fun" update.

Secure Data called. Apparently the new drive that I sent for the transfer/target drive is also bad?? WTF???

I don't know what the heck is going on here. I mentioned "hickups" in my previous post. I sent Drivesavers my failed drive and a new, factory packaged and unopened drive for the target.

When I got my drives back, there was a screw missing from the failed drive and the new unopened drive was not in the factory packaging. I called to see what was up with that and they had no clue. "Policy" says it would not have been opened if it was not needed.

Just got off the phone with them letting them know what's up with the failed new drive and the dust and debris inside my failed drive......They still don't know why the new drive would have been opened and are now also saying that they apparently never actually opened the drive....except that the diagnoses I got mentioned failed heads???? How would they know that if they never opened the drive??? WTF did they do to my drive for the several weeks they had it???

****LOL update in a update****

Drivesavers just called me as I am typing this....

Anyway, the first call they said they would replace the failed new drive****** The call now was they now want me to try to warranty the drive through Amazon or Western Digital first.

Ho Le FFFFFarts...


On the "plus" side tho I guess, it at least "seems" at the moment that Secure Data was able to eather fix or get around the firmware thing and actually start a recovery on the failed drive. So there is that at least

Recovery place just called....

HOLY CARP they got it!!!

I don't have the drive in hand yet. Should be back to me sometime next week BUT...

They sent me a list of what they recovered. From what the rep said and what I can see, It looks damn near 100%. There is a list of "possible" corrupt files as well, most of which don't really look too important. But best I can tell from the REALLY long list of recovered stuff, all the important stuff seems to be there.

It was also mentioned.....and I am scratching my head a bit about it....because the target drive I sent was bad and they are just using one of there external drives, they are hardware encrypted when they are shipped and I need to call them when I get it so they can tell me how to unlock it??? :icon_scratch:

I guess I understand that...sort of....for security purposes and all, but...I will have to wait and see I guess.

But anyway WOW Hopefully.....HOPEFULLY next week sometime, and hopefully everything works.

So, how are you managing backups going forward?

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
So, how are you managing backups going forward?

LOL 6TB drive in a external usb enclosure, all set and ready to go, and NOT a Seagate or a store bought/pre made eather.

As soon as things are back in hand it will be getting copied to the external drive. Then I can go through and see what I need to fix or rebuild and go from there

quote:

Originally posted by PakRatJR:

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
So, how are you managing backups going forward?

LOL 6TB drive in a external usb enclosure, all set and ready to go, and NOT a Seagate or a store bought/pre made eather.

As soon as things are back in hand it will be getting copied to the external drive. Then I can go through and see what I need to fix or rebuild and go from there

You really need more than one.

quote:

Originally posted by PakRatJR:

LOL 6TB drive in a external usb enclosure, all set and ready to go, and NOT a Seagate or a store bought/pre made eather.

Mark beat me to it. Use two backup drives and rotate them periodically. Two is on, and one is none.

I was actually looking into doing a NAS for a bit but it was a getting to be a little more than I was wanting to spend.

I do have some extra smaller drives sitting here that I will most likely set up as backups as well at some point as the majority of the "important" stuff will actually fit onto the smaller drives.

As a probably final update on this. I got my drive in today and so far anyway everything seems to working as it should

I haven't gone through and checked every file yet as there is a lot....almost 3tb....but everything I have checked so far has been working fine. YAY

I am in the process of copying everything over to my backup drive now and hopefully in a couple days I will have my replacement/warranty drive from western digital, at which point I will be able to get that installed and start getting everything copied back to that and finally get things back to "normal"