Since 2009 I have completed over 600 successful data recovery cases both for individuals and for corporations. The surprise discovery was that I received less than 15 negative forum posts on the entire internet after a Google search during that same period. Basically just from one website with multiple posts from anonymous “clients”.

Overall I truly feel this is not a bad record at all I would say there is still improvements to be made as always, but my track record tells the story

To the clients who have had a negative experience I can only say sorry one more time. Your case was the exception. I only wish more of the Happy clients would post positive testimonials

Thank you to all my clients.

David Gelkin

As has been widely reported, the severe flooding in Thailand is a tragic situation for families and businesses across the region. Currently, all Seagate facilities in Thailand are operational and our production is not constrained by either internal component supply or by our ability to assemble finished products. Rather, we are constrained by the availability of specific externally sourced components. As a result, industry demand will significantly outstrip supply at least for the December quarter and the supply disruption will continue for multiple quarters.
Seagate’s Opinion

Seagate believes unconstrained industry demand would have been 180 million units for the quarter ending December 2011. Given the supply disruption demand will significantly outstrip supply at least for the December 2011 quarter, and will likely continue for multiple quarters.

Seagate expects that industry shipments will be limited to approximately 110-120 million units and we expect to ship between 41-45 million units in the December 2011 quarter.

To aid in the relief and recovery efforts, Seagate is donating $1 million across a few key organizations in Thailand.
Our business priorities are:

1) To support our external component suppliers’ efforts to rebuild the supply chain as quickly as possible;

and,

2) To work with our customers to strategically align their near- and long-term requirements to our production capability. As a result, we are aligning our production schedules and product builds to best support both our suppliers and our customers.

Please understand that this is an evolving situation that we are diligently monitoring on a daily basis. We value our relationships with all of our partners, suppliers and customers and their satisfaction will remain our highest priority.

Seagate Partner Program team

Anyway, I have a case ongoing currently, and its taking its sweet time over being cloned. Its clicking and making scratching noises, generally sounding terrible, you get the idea. The drive has already checked out that physically its OK. The read/write heads are still all working even though there is a lot of slow down (Hence the need to clone). The firmware modules all checked out during the SA  check. A backup of the firmware was also made both to a profile directory and to DB using composite reading from all the available heads.

So in all- this has been a slow case to get going.

Once this clone is ready there shouldn’t be any major delays. The OS is Windows XP hence at least one NTFS partition. This is nice after a long running cloner like this. Hoping with crossed fingers that I can get the clone completed before needing to replace the head stack. There is a possibility that one read/write head maybe failing. Luckily I have real time monitoring of the cloned regions. Any indication of platter damage or catastrophic head failure will be easy to spot. So far ALL GREEN

Now its seems that since Seagate took over Maxtor, the quality control gremlins have started to infect there new owners. Currently it would be easy to say 1 out of 3 data recovery cases I receive from clients will be a Seagate drive. Some weeks it almost seems all the hard drives I receive for data recovery are Seagate.

Now…!! Not all Seagate drives seem to be affected in this manner however. Its mainly  the Seagate F3 family, that are the black sheep.

These are the drive models of the F3 family in question which mostly either have a firmware issue like LED00000CC or Drive locked alert. Either of these situations the client will not be able to access the drives contents. The drive will just be clicking while starting up. Usually the drive is not recognized either.

Barracuda ES.2 SATA
ST3250310NS          250Gb
ST3500320NS          500Gb
ST3750330NS          750Gb
ST31000340NS       1000Gb(1Tb)
Barracuda 7200.11 SATA
ST3160813AS         160Gb
ST3320613AS         320Gb
ST3500320AS         500Gb
ST3500620AS         500Gb
ST3640323AS         640Gb
ST3750330AS         750Gb
ST3750630AS         750Gb
ST31000333AS       1000Gb (1 TB)
ST31000340AS       1000Gb (1 TB)
ST31500341AS       1500Gb (1,5 TB)
Barracuda 7200.12 SATA
ST3160318AS         160Gb
ST3250318AS         250Gb
ST3320418AS         320Gb
ST3500410AS         500Gb
ST3500418AS         500Gb
ST3750528AS         750Gb
ST31000528AS      1000Gb

The Good news is in MOST cases the clients data is FULLY RECOVERABLE.

Main site link -> http://www.gelkin.net (In Finnish, but Google translate does a good job)

Now this is not a cut and dry analysis. Seagate took over Maxtor not so long ago and inherited the Maxtor markey share. This in my opinion make Seagate one of the largest if not the largest hard drive manufacturer. Plus the upswing with the popularity of usb exernal hard drives at a low price.

So I am very good at data recovery  from Seagates. Lets see if this Seagate failure continues.

By Maxwell Cooter | Techworld
Published: 18:02 GMT, 27 September 10

Read Full Press Release Here

Berlin, Germany, September 2 — Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502), a leading innovator in NAND flash memory technologies and solutions, today announced the launch of 8 gigabyte (GB), 16GB and 32GB SDHC UHS-I Cards, all compliant with the SD Memory Card Standard Ver. 3.0 (SD 3.0), UHS 104, that deliver the world’s fastest^[1] data read and write speeds^[2]. Toshiba also extended its industry leadership in memory card solutions by unveiling the world’s first microSDHC UHS-I Cards delivering 4GB, 8GB and16GB capacities.

Mass production of the new SDHC UHS-I Cards and sample shipments of the new microSDHC UHS-I Cards will start this November.

The new SDHC UHS-I Cards are the world’s first memory cards compliant with SD 3.0, UHS104, and introduce a new level of ultra-fast read and write speeds to NAND flash based memory cards: a maximum read speed of 95MB per sec, and a write speed of 80MB per sec.

The new microSDHC UHS-I Cards are the world’s first microSDHC memory cards compliant with SD 3.0, UHS50, and they also offer the world’s fastest read and write speeds in their class: a maximum read speed of 40MB per sec and a write speed of 20MB per sec.

Image shooting and sharing applications continue to grow in popularity, spurring demand for storage devices and applications that can capture high quality images and videos. The new SD 3.0 specifications meet strong demand in the SD card market and combine increased data capacity with the fast data transfer rates essential for such applications as burst shooting with digital single lens reflex cameras and other advanced digital still cameras, HD digital camcorders, and high speed transfers of data between hardware.

The high level specs and wide range of cards announced by Toshiba will support developers in bringing exciting applications to future generations of consumer products. By further enhancing its SD Memory Card line-ups with products offering larger capacities and higher data transfer speeds, Toshiba will continue to meet market demand, and to lead the NAND flash memory market.

The expanded new card series will be featured at the IFA 2010, in Berlin, Germany from September 3, and PHOTOKINA 2010, in Koln, Germany.

Note:

[1]

As of September 2, 2010.

[2]

Maximum read and write speed may vary depending on the host device, read and write conditions, and file size.

Outline of New SD Memory Cards

1. SDHC UHS-I Cards

2. microSDHC UHS-I Cards

Note: Product names above are for the Japanese market.

Key Features

1. SDHC UHS-I Cards (32GB, 16GB, 8GB)

(1)

Supports UHS104, a new ultra high speed SD interface, and the highest standard in the new SD 3.0, which provides 104MB per sec. bus speed on the SD interface. It realizes a maximum read speed of 95MB per sec and a write speed of 80MB per sec.

(2)

Provides the conventional SD interfaces—3.3V signal voltage for the DS mode (SD clock 25MHz and 12.5MB per sec) and the HS mode (SD clock 50MHz and 25MB per sec)—and is interoperable with existing SDHC host devices compliant with the SD Memory Card Standard Ver. 2.0 (SD 2.0).

(3)

Integrates highly secure CPRM copy protection technology.

2. microSDHC UHS-I Cards (16GB, 8GB, 4GB)

(1)

Supports UHS50, a new ultra high speed SD interface compliant with the new SD 3.0, which provides 50MB per sec. bus speed on the SD interface. It realizes a maximum read speed of 40MB per sec and a write speed of 20MB per sec, the fastest speed yet achieved in the microSD industry.

(2)

Provides the conventional SD interfaces—3.3V signal voltage for the DS mode (SD clock 25MHz and 12.5MB per sec) and the HS mode (SD clock 50MHz and 25MB per sec)—and is interoperable with existing microSDHC host devices compliant with the SD 2.0.

(3)

Compliant with DDR 50 (SD Clock 50MHz), with double the bus transfer rate (50MB/s) comparing with the existing HS mode at the same SD clock frequency.

(4)

Integrates highly secure CPRM copy protection technology.

Specifications

1. SDHC UHS-I Cards

2. microSDHC UHS-I Cards

Note: Product names above are for the Japanese market.

For further information about Toshiba’s memory card solutions, please visit
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/p-media/english/index.htm

September 14, 2010, seagate announced that its groundbreaking Momentus ® Self-Encrypting Drive, the world’s first laptop hard drive with built-in encryption to protect against unauthorized access to information on lost or stolen mobile computers, has secured FIPS 140-2 certification from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The key government certification clears the way for deployments of Momentus Self-Encrypting Drives (SEDs) by all U.S. and Canadian federal agencies, many state and local governments, and regulated industries such as healthcare, finance and defense required to use FIPS-certified gear to help protect sensitive data on PCs and computer networks. Many utility, education and transportation entities also have adopted the FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) 140-2 standard to lock down confidential information. Foreign governments in addition to Canada also recognize FIPS-validated products. The Momentus SED is the first hard drive with native encryption to earn the FIPS certification.

“The FIPS 140-2 certification exemplifies Seagate’s commitment to security standards that enable the widespread adoption of encrypting hard drives for laptops and other computers as the explosive growth of laptop PCs puts more sensitive personal and business information at risk, today’s NIST approval gives our system builder and end-user customers the peace of mind that Momentus ® Self-Encrypting Drives deliver the full power of government-grade security.” – said Dave Mosley, executive vice president of Sales, Marketing and Product Line Management at Seagate.

The FIPS 140-2 seal of approval comes three years after NIST, the federal agency focused on promoting product innovation by establishing technical standards for government and business, certified the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) chip built into the Momentus drive. Seagate has shipped more than a million of its self-encrypting laptop drives since their introduction in 2006.

See Seagate’s FIPS 140-2 certificate here: http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/documents/140-1/140crt/140crt1388.pdf .

More information on NIST and FIPS 140-2 is available on the NIST website:
http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/STM/cmvp/index.html

Seagate® Momentus® hard drives deliver high capacity and performance along with innovative technology, such as self-encryption and free-fall sensors. If you require feature-rich, reliable, robust and secure laptop storage, Momentus drives are for you.

More details: Seagate’s self-encryption Momentus Laptop hard drive

When the backed up data is damaged due to a system error or user’s mistake, they can be checked/recover through the Integrity Check procedure. Also the original data that was stored in the PC can be conveniently recovered when damaged or lost.

※ Caution : The Samsung Auto Backup program operates only with a Samsung External Hard Drive.

Download Samsung Auto Backup software