Why your Seagate external hard drive is beeping; beeping hard drives can be recovered with this fix

To be clear, for the end of the video: most of these jobs are in the $450-$1500 range depending on whether the old heads are salvageable and how difficult your case ends up being. Few if any wind up being $200. Steve made a mistake here by mentioning that he discounted a very simple case to $200, because as a result, we have been accused of being dishonest in other cases. Over the past year we were buried under hard drives, and the costs of expanding to a new facility & training new staff don't allow us to do this for $200 anymore. So in the interest of honesty & transparency - please email or check our website to understand the prices we are charging at any time, as they are subject to change, and on your case.

[camberwellcarrot]

Seagate - Creating Data Recovery Jobs Since We Stopped Caring

[barrypendley]

Steve recovered my Seagate 4 TB. Saved all my data and structure!!! 4 years worth of video and pictures.

[johnmellor]

"You should NEVER attempt to fix your own drive unless you're a technician". Makes video how to fix your own drive.

[possumcode]

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.

[TheMasterElite]

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!

[shulljc]

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.

[RafaelAmorimmeu]

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.

[alberthitter]

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.

[countzero]

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

[evilgremlin]

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)

[thatziggs]

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.

[gambini]

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

[mirko.jankovic]

Steve I must say that was fast & clean video. I would love to see how do you inspect the head's? Tnx

[TedTabaka]

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.

[interwebtubes]

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 👍

[isettech]

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.

[franciscopena]

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.

[giovannip.]

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?

[sviktor]

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.

[boounce]

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 ✊🏿