Seagate is one of the largest and oldest hard drive manufacturers. The company significantly strengthened when it bought its competitor Maxtor for around 2 billion dollars in 2006, and in 2012 it also bought Samsung.
Samsung drives now carry the Seagate logo (although the technology and architecture still remain Samsung’s).

The drives in the **DM** series (family Grenada, etc., e.g., ST3000DM001, ST2000DM001, etc.) are considered to be some of the poorest quality drives. Their mechanical parts (the read/write heads) are of poor quality, the platter material degrades quickly resulting in the surfaces where data is written being destroyed, and the drives also have many problems with their Firmware.

Additionally, the drives in the **LM035 and **LM007 series (usually in 1TB and 2TB respectively, e.g., ST1000LM035 and ST2000LM007), as well as the external drives with the Maxtor logo and others, belong to the Rosewood family and are one of the poorest quality series of drives from the company. Unfortunately, they are particularly widespread due to their affordable price. These drives, although very fast in their operation, have problems related to the data surface and are prone to surface damage which is usually complete, making the drives unrecoverable.

Another problem we face in recovering data from Seagate hard drives is the fact that the manufacturer, from 2015 onwards, locks access to the internal microcode of the drive, making access to it impossible and therefore many times recovery is not possible.
Northwind Data Recovery, with the help of the GDRA (Global Data Recovery Alliance — a closed group with the best data recovery engineers in the world), has managed to create its own software that allows us to access the internal microcode of the drives.

Seagate’s Barracuda 7200.11 & 7200.12 hard drives, particularly the ST31000340AS & ST3500320AS, were failing at an alarming rate, causing frustration among the company’s loyal followers.
A firmware microcode error, causing the infamous “Bricking“, appeared in these drives around the end of 2008, and the company recalled this series of drives. However, it was too late as millions of units had been sold worldwide (due to their good price) causing many users to face huge problems. The drive would work normally, then after a reboot, it would lock and not be recognized by the computer (not even by the BIOS). In other words, the drive would power up, spin up, but not be recognized.

In our labs, we have found a solution to this problem for many years, and we can solve it without requiring the drive to be opened (maintaining its warranty).

Seagate Momentus – experiences premature surface wear
Seagate U Series – frequent motor errors
Seagate Cheetah – frequent firmware errors
Seagate Barracuda – frequent firmware, motor, and head problems.
Seagate Rosewood – frequent head, surface, and firmware problems + very frequent stiction
Seagate V11 – frequent firmware, head, and surface problems

Seagate drives are vulnerable to voltage fluctuations. In such cases, the part of the drive that gets damaged is the board. This board contains unique data for each drive, which means you cannot simply replace the board and have the drive work again. Especially for Seagate drives manufactured from 2012 onwards, this is practically impossible.
It requires transferring this unique data from the failed drive to the donor in order for the drive to recognize its identity and function normally.
In many cases, the motor chip burns out (SMOOTH chip). If this happens, then your computer will shut down, you will notice a burnt smell and when you restart the computer, the drive will not start at all.

This scenario, where the drive does not start at all, can also mean a stuck motor or surface damage on the platters. Data recovery in these cases can only be done by opening the drive in the clean room and working on its interior.

In Seagate hard drives, it is possible that the heads knock from the start (listen to sounds from such typical Seagate hard drive errors).

Seagate Drive Data Recovery

Finally, a classic problem of these drives (like all other drives from all manufacturers) is Bad Sectors. After some time, the platters where data is written begin to degrade and bad sectors appear.
When the drive tries to read such areas of the surface, it may freeze or make strange noises such as “scratching” or “sweeping”. Once the drive starts showing such symptoms, it is very important to stop its operation immediately and submit it for a free diagnosis.
Any further attempts you make will add to the problems the drive already has and reduce the number of recoverable data.

In our labs, Northwind uses expensive cloning tools that can bypass the damaged parts of the surface and read the healthy data. This is usually the only method by which data recovery from Seagate drives is possible.