Today we will be talking about some of the common faults of Rosewood drives and what you should and shouldn’t do at the first signs of trouble. As always, backups are the easiest way to prevent data loss.

Seagate’s Rosewood series of drives have made an excellent step forward for drive technologies in both weight and data density, but this comes at the cost of increased fragility. Seagate’s Expansion series containing Rosewood family drives have been some of the most common recovery requests we have had this year. Some of that is due to the popularity of the drives, they are usually priced a little lower than competitors and most people don’t look much past the 1/2TB label on the packet and the price tag but we believe they just have elevated failure rates.

Rosewood drives are very sensitive to knocks and bumps when the drive is powered up. We have seen it happen where a knock or bump has not caused any immediately visible problems but the drive becomes damaged in a way that causes the surface of the drive to slowly be stripped away. If you notice your drive making any squealing or grinding noises at all, it is best to either unplug the drive immediately or make a copy of any important files as soon as possible.

The rosewood series of drives also have an unbalanced head stack. When a drive operates, the heads hover over the disk because of the velocity of the air from the spinning so usually when a drive powers down, the heads are moved off the disk to a parking ramp. The rosewood series of drives use an unbalanced head because it saves space and makes the drive quieter and quicker but this means that if the drive is dropped and the side or corners opposing the USB connector hit the ground, the headstack will be forced off the ramp and onto the platter. If the head is on the disk without that cushion then that heads will act like brakes on a car and the drive will make a ‘beeeeep…..beeeeep…..beeeeep’ sound when the motor attempts to start.

A head stuck Rosewood drive is one of the easier recoveries we do here because it usually happens suddenly and there will be minimal damage to the disk if it is brought straight to us. We can usually even save the heads and use them to recover the data before the disk goes completely bad.

The label of the Rosewood series drive is an interesting design choice by Seagate. It saves on space by being the seal of the top cover. Removing the label exposes the disk to the outside environment and will cause drive failure very quickly. The label should never be off the drive outside of a clean room or clean bench environment to prevent contamination. We have had to clean and rebuild a drive because someone took the label off and left it on a shelf for a year where the dust had time to collect inside of the drive. This drive unfortunately was not recoverable because the disk had started to corrode and would damage any new heads installed in the drive.

If your Seagate Expansion drive ever has any issues, give us a call and one of our friendly staff will be happy to help. We have worked with several failed  and external seagate hard drives with crashed heads or clicking and here are some of the models we have successful recovered in the past;

ST2000LM007 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1R81740-508
ST2000LM007 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1R8174-568
ST1000LM049 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 2GH172-020
ST2000LM007 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1R8174-070
ST1000LM035 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1RK172-568
ST2000LM007 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1R8174-570
ST1000LM035 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1RK172-021
ST2000LM007 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1R8174-568
ST1000LM035 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1RK172-568
ST1000LM035 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1RK172-071
ST1000LM035 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1RK172-566
ST1000LM035 Seagate Hard Drive Data Recovery
Part Number 1RK172-020