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RDD / Families and hosts / Dell-branded drives

Dell DP/N · D417 · ST1200MM0088 · HUH721212AL5200 9HXK6 · LT0800MO · PERC · Keep Your Hard Drive

Dell server drive recovery. A Seagate, a Toshiba or an HGST in a Dell caddy, with a Dell part number and opinions of its own.

Dell does not make drives. It buys them from Seagate, Toshiba, HGST and, for its LT-series SAS SSDs, SanDisk, loads firmware whose revisions begin with D, prints a five-character DP/N over the maker's label, and fits a carrier with Dell's own LEDs. A PERC flags any drive without Dell firmware as uncertified and reports the ones it has dropped as failed, predictive or missing; the LT-series SSDs on firmware before D417 failed at 40,000 power-on hours and thereafter reported 0 GB; and under a standard support contract the failed drive leaves with the engineer unless you bought Keep Your Hard Drive. On the bench a Dell drive is the drive underneath, imaged as a Seagate or a Toshiba would be, and the DP/N is recorded beside the model string. One failed Dell-branded member imaged 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.

Models we see, family by family.

Which kind of drive is it →
Family Model strings Interface, capacity and notes
10K and 15K SASST1200MM0088, ST600MM0006, ST300MP0006, AL14SEB120N2.5-inch · Dell firmware · R7x0 and MD1220
NL-SASHUH721212AL5200 (9HXK6), ST4000NM0025, MG09SCA18TE3.5-inch · MD1400 and R7x0 LFF
SATAHUS726T4TALE6L4, ST4000NM00353.5-inch · T-series and SATA backplanes
LT-series SAS SSDLT0200MO, LT0400MO, LT0800MO, LT1600MO, LT0800RO, LT1600RO, LT0200WM, LT0400WM, LT0800WMSanDisk-built · 40,000 hours before D417
NVMeDell-branded PM9A3, CM6, P4510; BOSS M.2R650/R750 backplanes

What tends to go wrong on a Dell drive.

40,000 hours, 2020Dell KB 000177640: the LT-series SAS SSDs on firmware before D417 fail at 40,000 power-on hours, reporting 0 GB with a medium-format-corrupted sense code. Dell's root cause was an assert with a bad check on a circular buffer's index. Drives fitted on the same day fail on the same day.
PuncturesA PERC that meets a read error during a rebuild marks the stripe bad on every member and finishes the rebuild around it: an array reported Optimal with a hole in it. Dell's cure is to delete and recreate; the bench images first.
Uncertified and blockedA PERC flags a replacement drive without Dell firmware as uncertified, and some models will not use it. It is a warning about support, not a fault with the data.
The warranty courierDell's standard service returns the failed drive to Dell. Keep Your Hard Drive, included in ProSupport Plus and available with ProSupport, lets you keep it. Without it, ask the engineer to wait until you have decided.

Dell-branded drives symptoms, and how long each gives you.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
Clicking or ticking in the slotFailed heads. Every power-on scratches. Power down.Do not delay
Predictive failure on a degraded setThe second failure, announced. Image both weak drives first.Do not delay
Dropped by the controller; reads in a dockOne slow read. Image it before it goes back in.Everyday job
Rebuild stalled at n per centA survivor's read errors. Power down.Do not delay
Two from the set gone within weeksSame batch, same hours. Send both; 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.

What the message means on a Dell drive.

Describe yours to us →
What you see The usual reason Where that leaves you
Non-certified driveNo Dell firmwareA warning; data unaffected
LT-series SSD at 0 GB, sense 03/31/00The 40,000-hour failureAssessed at controller level
Punctured stripe / bad blocksRebuild with errorsImage before recreating
Predictive failureThresholds crossed; still readsReplace on a healthy set; image first on a degraded one
Failed by the controller; spinsAnswered one read too slowlyUsually reads on the bench; image it
ClickingFailed headsPower down; matched donor in clean air
Rebuild stalled on this driveUnrecoverable read errorsImaged with weak areas last; set rebuilt from images

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

From the bench

  • Export the PERC log from OpenManage, iDRAC or perccli before the server is touched.
  • Keep the failed drive. It holds the stripes the rebuild could not compute.
  • Check the hours on every LT-series SSD the moment one fails. D417 prevents; it does not cure.
  • Failed by the controller is not failed. Enterprise firmware reports a bad sector in seconds; the controller drops the drive; the drive reads on a bench that waits.
  • Send it in its carrier with the slot written on it, and the controller's log if you can export one.
  • Drives bought together fail together. When one goes, the survivors are on notice, and the rebuild is where it shows.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · RDD-2026-0550JOB LOGGED ✓

A Dell-firmware ST600MM0006 from a PowerEdge R720 in RAID 10, the mirror partner also predictive, and a ProSupport engineer booked for the afternoon

The owner asked the engineer to wait. Both drives came here in their carriers: the failed one had a head swap on the clean bench and was imaged on the SAS imager; the predictive one was imaged with its weak areas last. Both images went back on fresh drives, and the engineer's replacements went into a set that had already been made whole.

100% of both members recovered5 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 the drive in its carrier
  • Export the controller log
  • Tell us the model string and the firmware revision

What sets us back

  • Rebuilding with a second drive flagged
  • Putting the drive back in to see
  • Running a long SMART test on a weak drive
  • Handing the failed drive to the warranty courier first

Questions answered before you commit.

Does Dell recover data from server drives?

Not as a service we could find. Dell withdrew its hard drive data recovery service on 25 November 2022, and it only ever covered non-RAID drives in client PCs. Keep Your Hard Drive lets you keep the failed drive; the recovery is done here.

The engineer wants to take the failed drive. Should I let him?

Not until you have its data, or you are sure you do not need it.

My LT-series SSDs all failed at once. Can the data be recovered?

Sometimes. Some answer at controller level and some do not, and the free look says which, at no charge.

What does it cost?

£300 + VAT for one drive after the free look, fixed in writing; sets of two to four from £500 + VAT; MD shelves from £1,250 + VAT.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Dell PowerEdge and PERC →PERC virtual disk degraded or failed →Punctured stripe on a Dell PERC →SSDs failed at 32,768 or 40,000 hours →Dell, HPE and Lenovo-branded →

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