Taking work now — the first look is freeServer and RAID drives posted in from anywhere in the UK, or handed in at ten drop-off pointsQuicker still, give us a ring:0800 6890668
RDDRAID Drive Data Recovery 0800 6890668 Price my job
RDD / Every kind of member drive / Enterprise SATA 3.5-inch

ST16000NM001G · WUH721816ALE6L4 · MG08ACA16TE · WD121KRYZ · Supermicro · Synology · TrueNAS

Enterprise SATA 3.5-inch drives. Built to be dropped by the controller the moment they hesitate.

An enterprise SATA drive is a capacity drive with firmware written for RAID: Seagate's Exos, WD's Ultrastar and Gold, Toshiba's MG. The difference from a desktop drive is time-limited error recovery. A desktop drive meets a bad sector and retries for as long as it takes; an enterprise drive gives up in seven seconds and reports the error, because a controller waiting longer would drop it as dead. The result is a drive the controller marks failed at the first serious bad sector, still perfectly readable on a bench prepared to wait, and a set of drives that fail in company because they were bought together. One failed member imaged for the rebuild is £300 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing, 3–4 days at the bench.

Free first lookOne fixed figure in writingNo data, no bill on most jobsReturn postage paid

Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668

Power down. Label every slot before a drive comes out. Do not rebuild while a second drive is flagged. Do not clear or import a foreign configuration. Do not initialise, reformat or PSID-revert anything. A rebuild reads every sector of every surviving member, and on a set whose drives were bought together it is where the second failure is found. Nothing on the drives gets worse while the server is off.

Enterprise SATA symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
Dropped by the controller; reads fine in a dockOne slow read. Image it before it goes back in.Everyday job
ClickingFailed heads. Power down.Do not delay
Rebuild stalled at n per cent on another driveA survivor's read errors. Power down; image the weak drives first.Do not delay
Not detected after a power eventFirmware or board. Do not keep power-cycling.Do not delay
FARM log shows thousands of hours on a drive sold as newA history, not a fault. Expect the set to age together.Everyday job
SMART 5, 197 or 198 climbingReallocated and pending sectors. Image before the count crosses the line.Everyday job
Packing it and posting it: power the server or shelf down, write the slot number on each drive with a marker before it comes out of its carrier, and keep it in the carrier. Send every member from the set where the set is the job, or the one failed member where the set is healthy and you want it imaged for the rebuild. Each drive travels in an anti-static bag inside its own padding, in a box with nothing able to move. Send the controller only if we ask for it. Insure the parcel for what the data is worth rather than the price of the drives, and use a tracked service. The posting address is not printed anywhere on this site; it arrives by email in reply to the form, with a booking sheet to print; the sheet inside the parcel is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened. Or hand the sealed parcel in at the nearest of ten drop-off points, your name on the outside and the sheet inside; say where you are on the form and it comes by email. We pay the postage home either way. The whole of it is written up on the guide to packing and posting.

Where it lives, and what fails.

Time-limited error recoverySeven seconds, then the drive reports the sector unreadable. The controller sees an error, not a hang, and drops the drive if it happens often enough. The bench turns that off and reads the sector the slow way.
HeliumExos X10 onwards, Ultrastar He8 onwards and Toshiba MG07 onwards are sealed and helium-filled. They are opened in clean air only when a head swap leaves no alternative, and imaged at once afterwards.
The FARM logSeagate's Field Accessible Reliability Metrics keep a second count of hours and starts that SMART does not. In January 2025 it caught used Exos drives being sold as new; later the FARM values were faked too. The bench reads both.
Same batch, same hoursFour Exos drives bought on the same day have the same firmware, the same platters and the same wear. A set that lost one has usually got another close behind, and the rebuild is where it shows.

Model strings, and what they tell us.

Describe yours to us →
Model string What it is What it means on the bench
ST16000NM001GExos X16 16TB SATA 512eHelium; FastFormat between 512e and 4Kn
ST12000NM0007Exos X12 12TBFleets from 2017–2019, now failing in company
WUH721816ALE6L4Ultrastar DC HC550 16TB SATA 512eE6 = SATA 512e; N6 would be 4Kn
MG08ACA16TEToshiba MG08 16TB SATAA = SATA; one large operator saw a batch fail early
WD121KRYZWD Gold 12TBUltrastar mechanics under a WD label

From the parcel arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on the parcel and a number on every drive the day it is opened, matched to the slot you wrote on it. An engineer settles what has actually happened before anything spins: the interface, the sector format, the firmware, the security state, and what the controller was saying when it stopped. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNo rebuilds, no imports, no resets
02

The drive on its own bench

A member drive is read on the equipment its interface needs: a SAS imager for SAS and NL-SAS, a SATA imager for enterprise SATA, a terminated SCSI or Fibre Channel controller for the legacy drives, a PCIe adaptor for NVMe. It is never put back in a server, and never in a controller that will try to rebuild. Drives that answer at full speed are imaged; drives with weak or failed heads go to the clean bench, where matched donors are fitted and the service area repaired before a sector is read.

Read at its native interfaceFailing heads to the clean bench
03

Imaged once, at its native sector size

Every drive is imaged sector by sector, head by head where it needs it, with the bad areas last. Drives with 520- or 528-byte sectors are imaged as they are and the extra bytes stripped from the image, never the drive. Self-encrypting drives are unlocked on the imager with the key you supply. From then on the originals are not touched again.

Head by head, weak areas lastNative sector size preserved
04

The image, and the set

Where the set is healthy and one member was the job, the image goes back to you on a fresh drive, sector-identical, ready to rebuild from. Where the set is the job, every member is imaged and the array reassembled in software from the images: order, chunk size, parity rotation and the reshape point read from the drives' own metadata, the file system repaired on the virtual volume, never on the originals. The array work is covered in full on our RAID array site, and it happens on the same bench.

One member: a sector-identical image on fresh mediaA set: reassembled in software from the images
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the job3–4 days at the bench

What arrives most often

  • The controller's verdict is not the bench's. A drive dropped for one slow read is usually a drive that images in an afternoon.
  • Do not run a long SMART test on a weak drive. It reads every sector, which is the rebuild by another name.
  • Check the FARM log on 'new' Seagate drives with smartctl. Tens of thousands of hours on a drive sold as new is a history you need to know about.
  • Helium drives are opened once. If the heads must be swapped, the drive is imaged immediately afterwards and not reassembled for use.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · RDD-2026-0553JOB LOGGED ✓

Eight ST16000NM001G drives in a Supermicro RAID 6, two dropped within a week, and FARM logs that showed 30,000 hours on drives bought as new

The owner powered down when the second drive dropped. Both were imaged on the bench, one after a head swap on the clean bench, the other slowly with its weak areas last; the FARM logs on all eight showed the set had been used before it was sold. Both images went back on fresh drives and the set was rebuilt, with a note about the other six.

100% of both members recovered6 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Power down and label the bays
  • Send the dropped drive, and any drive with a warning
  • Copy the model string and firmware revision from the label
  • Run smartctl with the FARM option on the survivors, if you can, and send the output

What sets us back

  • Rebuilding with a survivor showing pending sectors
  • Running a long SMART test on a weak drive
  • Putting the dropped drive back in to see
  • Buying drives without checking their hours

Questions answered before you commit.

The controller dropped the drive but it reads fine in a USB dock. Is it faulty?

It had at least one sector the controller would not wait for. Image it before it goes back in; a dock that reads it today reads it slowly tomorrow.

Are Exos and Ultrastar drives different to recover?

The interface and the mechanics are the same class. Both are helium above about 10TB, both have enterprise firmware, and both are imaged the same way.

What does it cost?

£300 + VAT for one member drive after the free look; two to four from £500 + VAT; larger sets from £1,250 + VAT.

How long does it take?

3–4 days at the bench for one drive; 5–10 days at the bench for a set.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Seagate Exos →WD / HGST Ultrastar →Toshiba MG →Predictive failure, SMART and grown defects →Helium and SMR members →

Nothing gets worse while it is powered down.

Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the server off and the drives in their slots.

0800 6890668

Price my jobPacking and posting