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RDD / Families and hosts / WD / HGST Ultrastar

HUH728080ALE600 · HUH721212AL5200 · WUH721816ALE6L4 · HUS726T4TALE6L4 · HUC101812CSS200

Ultrastar drive recovery. HGST built them, Western Digital renamed them, and servers everywhere still run them.

HGST's Ultrastar became Western Digital's in 2018 and kept its model strings: HUH for helium, HUS for air, WUH for the WD era, HUC for the 2.5-inch 10K and 15K SAS drives, then the spindle speed, the capacity, the generation, and a suffix that spells out the interface, the sector format and the security option. The He8 fleets of 2015 and 2016 are now old enough that Backblaze's HUH728080ALE600 ran at over 10 per cent annual failure in late 2025; the DC HC520 and HC550 are the drives in most shelves sold since; the C10K and C15K are the fast drives in most Gen9 and R7x0 servers under Dell and HPE labels. One failed Ultrastar 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
He6, He8, He10, He12HUH728080ALE600, HUH721008AL5204, HUH721212ALE600SATA and SAS · helium · fleets at seven years and more
DC HC310, HC320, HC330HUS726T4TALE6L4, HUS728T8TALE6L4Air-filled · 4–10TB · widely rebadged
DC HC510, HC520, HC530HUH721010ALE600, HUH721212AL5200, HUH721414ALE6L4Helium · 10–14TB
DC HC550, HC560, HC570, HC590WUH721816ALE6L4, WUH722020ALE6L4, WUH722222ALE6L4, WUH722626ALE6L4Helium · 16–26TB · SATA and SAS
C10K, C15K (2.5-inch SAS)HUC101812CSS200, HUC101890CS4200, HUC156030CSS20010K and 15K · 300GB–1.8TB · Dell and HPE labels
DC HC6xx (SMR)WSH722020ALE6L4Host-managed shingled; hyperscale only

What tends to go wrong on an Ultrastar.

The He8 ageBackblaze's HUH728080ALE600 fleet reached a 10.29 per cent annual failure rate in the fourth quarter of 2025 at about seven and a half years old, with a working theory about vibration sensitivity. Helium drives bought in 2015 and 2016 are reaching that age everywhere.
4Kn on the wrong hostThe same HC520 comes as AL5200 (512e) and AL4204 (4Kn). A 4Kn drive in a host that expects 512-byte sectors reports the wrong capacity or none and looks broken. It is not; it is imaged on a 4Kn imager.
Three security optionsThe last digit of the string says whether the drive is instant-secure-erase, secure-erase or a TCG SED. A locked SED after a controller change reads as noise until its key arrives.
The 10K and 15K drivesThe C10K and C15K are the fast drives in most Gen9 and R7x0 servers under HPE and Dell labels, and they fail at the heads first, with donors getting scarcer.

WD / HGST Ultrastar 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 Ultrastar.

Describe yours to us →
What you see The usual reason Where that leaves you
Wrong capacity on a new hostA 4Kn drive (AL4, N6) on a 512-byte hostImaged on a 4Kn imager; nothing wrong
Locked / random data after a controller swapA TCG SEDFind the key
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

  • Decode the string before the drive is powered. Helium or air, interface, sector format and security option are all in it.
  • HGST and WD are the same drives since 2018, and the same recovery.
  • Instant Secure Erase, done, is done. A drive that was ISE'd was erased on purpose, and nothing brings it back.
  • 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-2026-0556JOB LOGGED ✓

Twelve HUH721212AL5200 drives from a Dell MD1400 in RAID 60, one failed and one predictive, feeding a file server nobody had backed up

The owner powered the shelf down when the second drive was flagged. Both weak drives were imaged on the SAS imager, the failed one after a head swap on the clean bench, and both images went back on fresh drives with the set's SED keys intact. The array rebuilt from twelve readable members.

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.

Is HGST the same as WD?

For these drives, since 2018, yes. The strings and the mechanics carried over.

My Ultrastar shows the wrong capacity on another server. Is it faulty?

Probably not. It is a 4Kn drive on a host that expects 512-byte sectors. Copy the model string; if it ends AL4 or N6, that is the answer.

Can you recover an Instant Secure Erased drive?

No. It was erased on purpose, by regenerating its key.

What does it cost?

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

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

NL-SAS 3.5-inch →Helium and SMR members →Drive shows 0 GB or incompatible sector size →SAS 2.5-inch 10K and 15K →

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