Fujitsu MAW3073NC · MAX3147NC · MBA3073RC · Maxtor Atlas 10K V 8K073J0 · Quantum Atlas · IBM DDYS · Hitachi HUS103014FL
Fujitsu, Maxtor and Quantum legacy drives drive recovery. The other makers' SCSI drives, from the other decade.
Fujitsu made SCSI and early SAS server drives until it sold the business to Toshiba in 2009: the MAW and MAX 10K and 15K SCSI drives in Fujitsu-Siemens Primergy servers and in Dell and HP boxes, the MBA and MBB on SAS. Maxtor's Atlas and Quantum's before it were the other SCSI drives in every PowerEdge and ProLiant of the early 2000s, and IBM's DDYS and Hitachi's Ultrastar SCSI filled the xSeries. They arrive seized, clicking or dead on a dead bus, and the bench has the controllers, terminators and adaptors for all of them and donors for some. One legacy drive imaged is £300 + VAT after the free look, fixed in writing; a set of five or more from £1,250 + VAT.
Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668
Models we see, family by family.
Which kind of drive is it →| Family | Model strings | Interface, capacity and notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fujitsu SCSI | MAW3073NC, MAW3147NC, MAX3073NC, MAX3147NC | 10K and 15K · Ultra320 SCA |
| Fujitsu SAS | MBA3073RC, MBB2147RC, MBC2073RC | Early SAS · 3Gb/s |
| Maxtor and Quantum Atlas | 8K073J0, 8K147J0, Atlas 10K III | 10K and 15K SCSI |
| IBM and Hitachi | DDYS-T36950, IC35L073UWDY10, HUS103014FL3600 | Ultra160 and Ultra320 |
What tends to go wrong on a legacy drive.
Fujitsu, Maxtor and Quantum legacy drives symptoms, and how long each gives you.
Not listed? Describe it on the form →What the message means on a legacy drive.
Describe yours to us →| What you see | The usual reason | Where that leaves you |
|---|---|---|
| Dead after years off | Seized bearings or tired electronics | Freed and imaged on the bench |
| Not seen on the bus | Termination, ID or cable | Terminated controller of its generation |
| Clicking | Failed heads on a donorless drive | Matched donor sought; imaged |
| RAID card dead | The set is on the drives | Imaged and reassembled without the card |
From the parcel arriving to your files going back.
Work we have closed →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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
From the bench
- Do not keep trying. A drive from 2006 that did not spin this morning needs the bench, and every attempt is a spin-up it cannot afford.
- The bench has the controllers, adaptors and terminators. Nothing in a desktop will connect.
- Send the set. The survivors are imaged while they still read.
What helps, and what harms.
Do this much first
- Power down and stop
- Label the slots and send every drive
- Send the RAID card if it is easy
- Tell us what generation the server is and what is on it
What sets us back
- Powering it on again to see
- Borrowing a SCSI card from another machine
- Letting a new controller initialise the drives
- Scrapping the server before the data is off
Questions answered before you commit.
Can you still read Fujitsu SCSI drives?
Yes, on terminated Ultra320 controllers with SCA adaptors. Donors are the limit, and the free look says whether yours needs one.
Do I send one drive or the set?
One drive where the set is healthy and you want it imaged for the rebuild; every member, labelled by slot, where a second drive is flagged or the set has failed.
What does it cost?
£300 + VAT for one drive after the free look, fixed in writing; a set 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.
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.