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RDD / Every kind of member drive / SAS 2.5-inch 10K and 15K

ST1200MM0088 · ST600MP0006 · HUC101812CSS200 · AL14SEB120N · Dell · HPE

SAS 2.5-inch 10K and 15K drives. Small, fast, and built with more platters than the capacity suggests.

The 2.5-inch SAS drive is the one that fills the front of a 1U or 2U server: 300GB to 2.4TB, spinning at 10,000 or 15,000 rpm, speaking the SCSI command set over two SAS ports that a desktop cannot see. Seagate's Enterprise Performance and Exos 10E and 15E families carry the ST…MM and ST…MP model strings, HGST's C10K and C15K the HUC strings, Toshiba's the AL14 and AL15, and most of them arrive here under a Dell, HPE or Lenovo label with vendor firmware on top. They fail at the heads first, because there are more of them packed tighter than in any desktop drive, and they fail in company, because a set bought together has lived the same hours in the same chassis. One failed member imaged for the rebuild is £300 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing, 3–4 days at the bench; a 15K set of five or more starts at £1,250 + VAT.

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
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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.

SAS 10K and 15K symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
Clicking or ticking from a slotFailed heads. Every power-on scratches. Power down.Do not delay
Predictive failure on a healthy setThe drive has crossed its own thresholds and still reads. Replace it, or image it first.Everyday job
Predictive failure on a degraded setThe second failure, announced. Power down; image both weak drives first.Do not delay
Spins up and down, never readyFirmware or service area. Do not keep trying.Do not delay
Failed by the controller, but SMART looks fineIt answered too slowly, once. Usually readable on a bench that waits.Everyday job
Two drives from the set gone within a weekSame batch, same life. Send both, and expect a third.Do not delay
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.

More heads, tighter tolerancesA 15K 2.5-inch drive spins small platters very fast with heads flying closer than any desktop drive's. When one head fails the whole stack is replaced with a matched donor on the clean bench, and donors for 15K drives are scarcer every year.
Two ports, one command setSAS drives speak SCSI and present two ports for redundancy. They need a SAS host adaptor to be seen at all, and a SAS imager to be read safely: one that controls how long a read may take and how many times it is retried.
Vendor firmwareThe same Seagate ST1200MM0088 arrives with Seagate, Dell or HPE firmware, and the OEM versions refuse hosts that are not theirs. The bench reads them on their own terms and treats them as the mechanics they are.
Self-encrypting by defaultMost SAS drives sold since the mid-2010s are TCG Enterprise SEDs. Unlocked on a PERC or Smart Array, they read normally; locked, they need the controller's key before a sector can be read. Ask before you post.

Model strings, and what they tell us.

Describe yours to us →
Model string What it is What it means on the bench
ST1200MM0088Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K, 1.2TB, common under Dell and HPEDell D-firmware or HPE HPD-firmware; matched donors plentiful
ST600MP0006Seagate Enterprise Performance 15K, 600GB15K donors scarce; heads first
HUC101812CSS200HGST C10K1800, 1.8TB 10K SASHelium-free; SED variants end differently
AL14SEB120NToshiba AL14 10K, 1.2TBSE = 10K, SX = 15K
Dell 0-prefixed part numbers / HPE EG…The same drives with a vendor part numberFirmware revision starts D or HPD; read as the underlying model

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 2.5-inch SAS drive goes straight onto the SAS imager, where its firmware, defect lists and security state are read before a sector is. A drive that clicks goes to the clean bench for a matched head stack; a drive that will not come ready has its service area repaired first.

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

  • Failed by the controller is not failed. A RAID controller drops a drive that answers one read too slowly. On a bench prepared to wait, most of them read.
  • 15K drives are running out of donors. Manufacturing ended years ago; the bench keeps stock, and some jobs wait for a match.
  • Send it in its carrier, with the slot number written on it. The carrier's LEDs and the vendor's firmware are part of the story.
  • If it is locked, find the key before it goes in the post: the controller it came from, or its key manager. A locked SED reads as noise on any other host.

How much comes back: from a single 10K or 15K member with failed heads, usually all or nearly all of it, on fresh media ready for the rebuild. From a set whose survivors were rebuilt into a second failure and then reinitialised, less.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · RDD-2026-0551JOB LOGGED ✓

An ST1200MM0088 out of a PowerEdge R730, slot 3, clicking, with a RAID 5 set of six that could not rebuild without it

Two heads had failed and the controller had marked the drive failed; a second drive was showing predictive failure, so the owner powered down instead of rebuilding. The clicking drive had a matched head stack fitted on the clean bench and was imaged on the SAS imager head by head; the predictive-failure drive was imaged too, with its weak areas last. Both images went back on fresh drives and the set rebuilt cleanly.

100% of the member recovered4 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 slot
  • Send it in its carrier
  • Tell us the controller, the RAID level and what it said
  • Say whether the drive is a SED and where the key is

What sets us back

  • Rebuilding while a second drive is flagged
  • Putting the drive back in to see whether it comes up
  • Trying it on a desktop SATA port, which it will not fit
  • Handing it to the warranty courier before you have its data

Questions answered before you commit.

Can you recover one SAS drive so I can rebuild the set?

Yes. That is the commonest job here: the failed member imaged onto fresh media, sector-identical, for £300 + VAT, and the rebuild runs from a drive that answers every read.

The controller says failed but the drive spins. Is it dead?

Usually not. Enterprise firmware gives up on a bad sector in seconds so the controller can carry on; the controller drops the drive; the drive reads on a bench that waits.

Is a 15K drive harder to recover than a 10K?

The heads are more delicate and the donors scarcer. It is no less recoverable, and it is priced the same.

What does it cost?

£300 + VAT for one member drive after the free look, fixed in writing; two to four members from £500 + VAT; 15K sets of five or more 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.

SAS drive not detected →RAID drive clicking →Dell-branded drives →HPE-branded drives →Seagate Cheetah and Savvio →

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