Help! - 2TB Seagate Pipeline HD Died @ 215 Days

[Sushihunter]

I have a refurbished 2TB Seagate Pipeline Hard Drive that failed after only 215 days since purchased.

 

I believe that the files on the disks are OK, and that the problem is in the control board, or something similar.

 

Drive was working fine one moment, then suddenly I was not able to access it.  Then Windows started prompting me to format the drive to be able to use it.

 

Needless to say, I have not formatted the drive.

 

I can read the SMART info using SeaTools, and Recuvva let me see files on the HD.

 

Nothing life-changing on the drive - just over 120 HD quality movies and a couple dozen multiple seasons of TV shows - it was about 75% full.

 

I've pulled the drive from the system and will wait until I have some options for recovery before putting it back in.

 

Any idea on how to get this drive up and running again without formatting would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks!

[A Silver]

Honestly the only thing I can think of is getting a specialist to to move the 'disks' into a different housing as you said the problem is the control board.

[Sushihunter]

Just now, A Silver said:

Honestly the only thing I can think of is getting a specialist to to move the 'disks' into a different housing as you said the problem is the control board.

Yes, that is my suspicion, but not proven.

 

I'm just waiting to pick up another HD, (this one won't be "refurbished"), before I get into this.

 

I'm kind of busy putting together a new LGA1151 system, so this has taken a back seat. I just don't want to be rushed and do something that I can't recover from.

 

I hear that there is a somewhat local company that can swap the control board - I'm saving them for my last resort.  $$$

 

Thanks!

[rheyL]

on the smart status, there are a lot of reallocated sector. Might be the hdd itself is dying. and getting a professional to move those disk in a new housing is costly ?

[AshleyAshes]

On 11/11/2017 at 7:34 AM, Sushihunter said:

and Recuvva let me see files on the HD.

Soooo... Why not use Recuvva to recover the data if it can see the files...?

[Sushihunter]

Well... because it is a 2TB HD that is almost 3/4's full, and I don't have another empty 2TB HD to copy it to.

 

I'm kind of afraid of getting into a position where I make it worse.

 

Also, I'm right in the middle of setting up a new computer and would like to get that done before jumping into this box of snakes.

 

So I thought it best to seek the advice of people who know more about this than me.

 

[AshleyAshes]

9 hours ago, Sushihunter said:

Well... because it is a 2TB HD that is almost 3/4's full, and I don't have another empty 2TB HD to copy it to.

 

I'm kind of afraid of getting into a position where I make it worse.

 

Also, I'm right in the middle of setting up a new computer and would like to get that done before jumping into this box of snakes.

 

So I thought it best to seek the advice of people who know more about this than me.

 

Buy another 2TB drive or larger.  If you want someone to tell you how to make this drive 'good' again, that's not happening.  If you don't have backups you need to rescue your stuff ASAP.  If Recuva can SEE files then use it to copy those files to a new drive.

[Sushihunter]

Update: December 10, 2017

 

My original plans were to hook this failed Pipeline Drive up to my new LGA1151 computer and to use Periform Recuva to see if I could pull any of the files off of it and onto a WD My Passport HD. Otherwise, sending it to a place that specializes in fixing broken HD's.

 

Well...

 

After getting Windows 10 Home 64 installed and working, I hooked up the Pipeline. On booting, I got some messages stating that the Pipeline was being scanned for errors.

 

After a few minutes, I'm looking at a "working" Pipeline HD!

 

I quickly grabbed the WD My Passports HD and copied over the entire contents of the Pipeline, one directory at a time.

 

Only lost 2 files: one HD movie, and one TV show.

 

I don't know what W10 did that W7 couldn't do, but I got all my video files back except for two.

 

Scanning the Pipeline HD, I am still seeing the same SMART errors that I posted a photo of here earlier.

 

As I can no longer trust this HD not to fail again in the future, I have pulled it from the system and it will just be an emergency back-up in the event that I need any of the files on  it. I don't see any sense in spending a lot of money on it when I can simply buy a new HD for probably much less than it would cost to fix this one.

[seagate_surfer]

Sorry to hear that you're running into issues with the Pipeline drive. At this point, we'd agree that your best bet would be to just replace the drive. You're correct that it's more cost-effective to just buy a new drive rather than trying to fix up the one you have, the reason for this is that hard drive components are not easy to swap and would likely involve buying another drive to borrow parts from anyways, so at that point, it's probably best to just replace it. With any hard drive, it's important to make sure to have a strong backup strategy. This protects you in the event that:

A. You shouldn't need to pay a large sum to a data recovery service
B. You can just buy a new drive and recover your data easier that way.

You can check to see if there's any warranty on the drive to pursue RMA by using our Warranty Validation Tool.

[Sushihunter]

5 hours ago, seagate_surfer said:

You can check to see if there's any warranty on the drive to pursue RMA by using our Warranty Validation Tool.

 

Yes, already looked into it. Problem is that it was a Refurb, and only had a 30 or 90 day warranty. Still, only 215 days!

 

Funny thing is that SeaTools won't read a lot of the data on the Pipeline drive, yet the WD program will.

 

Sadly, since this drive failed, I've read a number of reviews from others who bought Refurb Pipelines and many of them have failed.

 

I understand that these drives are sold at a discounted price, but it has really turned me off of every buying another refurb drive again if I can't get a decent warranty period on them.

 

In one respect, I did get lucky and was able to pull all but two files off of the drive. It took me all day to copy the directories over one by one, but I got them.

 

Thanks for your input.