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RDD / Families and hosts / Seagate Exos

Exos X10 · X12 · X16 · X18 · X20 · X24 · Exos E · 2X18 · ST16000NM001G · ST12000NM0007

Seagate Exos drive recovery. The drive that fills most servers now, and most of the post we open.

Seagate's Exos is the drive in the rack: the X series from 10 to 24TB, helium-filled, in SATA and SAS with self-encrypting and FIPS versions; the air-filled Exos E and older Enterprise Capacity from 1 to 10TB; the 2X Mach.2 with two actuators that a SAS controller sees as two drives. They carry ST, the capacity in gigabytes, NM, and four characters Seagate does not publish a decoder for, and they fail at the heads, through a defect list that climbs for months, and occasionally in the firmware. Two things are the family's own: the X10 and X12 fleets bought in 2017 to 2019 are now failing in company, and in January 2025 buyers found Exos drives sold as new whose FARM logs showed tens of thousands of hours. One failed Exos 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.

Models we see, family by family.

Which kind of drive is it →
Family Model strings Interface, capacity and notes
Exos X10, X12, X14ST10000NM0086, ST12000NM0007, ST14000NM0018SATA and SAS · helium · 2017–2019 fleets near end of life
Exos X16, X18ST16000NM001G, ST16000NM000J, ST16000NM002J, ST18000NM000JSATA and SAS · helium · FastFormat 512e/4Kn
Exos X20, X22, X24ST20000NM007D, ST22000NM001E, ST24000NM002HSATA and SAS · helium · ten platters
Exos 2X18 (Mach.2)ST18000NM0012 (SAS SED), ST18000NM0092 (SATA)SAS shows two 9TB logical units; SATA one 18TB
Exos E / Enterprise CapacityST4000NM0035, ST8000NM0055, ST2000NM0008SATA and SAS · air-filled · 1–10TB

What tends to go wrong on an Exos.

End-of-life fleetsBackblaze's ST12000NM0007 ran at a 9.47 per cent annual failure rate in the first quarter of 2025, and its ST10000NM0086 at 5.23 per cent in the fourth, which Backblaze called end-of-life activity. Sets bought in 2017 to 2019 are reaching that age everywhere, and the second failure follows the first.
Used drives sold as new, 2025Heise reported in January 2025 that Exos drives sold as new showed near-zero hours in SMART and 15,000 to 50,000 in their FARM logs; Network World traced them to Chia mining farms; Seagate asked for suspect drives to be reported. Later batches had the FARM values faked too. A set built from them ages all at once.
Two actuators, two LUNsThe 2X18 on SAS presents two independently addressable 9TB logical units with a combined defect list; a controller that striped a set across both halves loses both when the drive fails. Both halves are imaged and the record kept of which was which.
HeliumEvery Exos X is welded shut with helium inside. A head swap means opening it once and imaging immediately, because heads built for helium fly badly in air.

Seagate Exos 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 an Exos.

Describe yours to us →
What you see The usual reason Where that leaves you
FARM log hours far above SMART hoursA used drive sold as newNot a fault; a history the set shares
2X18: one LUN failed, the other fineOne actuator or its headsBoth halves imaged; the set rebuilt from both
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

  • Read the FARM log, with smartctl -l farm, on any Exos bought as new. Tens of thousands of hours is a history you need to know.
  • The suffix is not documented, but the label is: SED, FIPS, 4Kn and the interface are printed on it. Copy the whole line.
  • A 2X18 is two drives in one case, as far as a SAS controller is concerned, and is priced as one drive here.
  • 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-2026-0553JOB 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 and 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 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.

Can you recover one Exos drive from a set so it can rebuild?

Yes. It is imaged onto fresh media, sector-identical, for £300 + VAT, and the rebuild runs from a drive that answers every read.

My new Exos drives show thousands of hours in FARM. Is that a fault?

It is a history. Seagate asks for suspect drives to be reported; the set will age together, and the bench plans around it.

Is a 2X18 two drives?

On SAS, as far as your controller is concerned, yes: two 9TB logical units. Here it is one drive, imaged as two halves.

Does Seagate recover Exos drives?

Seagate's Rescue plan is an in-lab service that takes up to thirty business days and is not available in every country; its coverage of Exos drives in the UK is not something we could confirm. The free look here costs nothing.

What does it cost?

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

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

Enterprise SATA 3.5-inch →NL-SAS 3.5-inch →Helium and SMR members →Seagate Exos 2X (Mach.2) →Predictive failure, SMART and grown defects →

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