Data Recovery from Seagate Momentus

Seagate Momentus laptop hard disk drive failure – Data recovery information

Common models:

• Momentus 5400.2, Momentus 5400.3, Momentus 5400.4
• Momentus 7200.1, Momentus 7200.2, Momentus 7200.3, Momentus 7200.4

Information:Seagate”s Momentus drive is a recent addition into the laptop hard disk market and comes in capacities from 30Gb to 1Tb. As their popularity increases, we are beginning to see more of them fail and come in for data recovery.

Common Failures:These hard drives are susceptible to all the usual types of hard drive failure – ie. electronic faults, mechanical faults, media degradation etc. There are additionally, 3 unique types of failure:

Failure 1- 7200.3 Momentus drives – firmware fault

• The drive will be identified correctly by the computer but the LBA value / capacity of the drive will report as 0
• This error is identical to the 7200.11 Seagate firmware problem

Failure 2- Momentus drives with a Firmware revision 7.01

• The drive will start & be recognised in the BIOS but the computer will run slowly and may hang. A regular ”ticking” sound may be heard
• The drive will start but not be recognised in the BIOS. A regular ”ticking” sound may be heard
• Additional: Check the firmware (or ”F/W”, or Revision) of the hard drive. If it is 7.01 these drives are ALSO prone to head crashes. This failure is unique to 7.01 drives only.

Failure 3 – Momentus 7200.4 drives

• Apparent electrical failure
• Actual spindle failure – data is recoverable

Recovery possibilities:
The Data Clinic can usually perform a full recovery from any Seagate Momentus hard disk.

Additional:
We have recently seen many Seagate Momentus drives, with media degradtion problems that have been sent to us for recovery. Some of these disks have been to other recovery companies, without success. Fortunately we can usually recover the data from these drives using our own data recovery hardware tool, known as Diskmaster.

What if I have one of these drives but the symptoms are different?:
This is quite possible, they are still prone to all the other problems hard disks suffer from ie. mechnical failure, logical failure, bad sectors etc.

What should I do?:
Call the Data Clinic and talk your problem through with us on 0871 977 2525, or fill out our auto-form and we”ll call you back