Hitachi and HGST drives have earned an outstanding record of reliability, which is why so many remain operational long after their host machines have been retired. But they all eventually fail. The failures often fall into a few easily recognisable patterns: the repeated “click” from a failing head on a mechanical drive; a mechanical drive slowing down because it will no longer read (or write) data in certain areas of the disk (“bad sectors”); and the firmware error indicating a disk failure where none actually exists. Being able to identify which type of failure you are experiencing and understanding what not to do next can make the difference between recovering your data with ease and being forced to recover it using extreme measures.
Hitachi (and HGST, its later identity as part of Western Digital) produced three families of storage products with names we continue to see every day. The 3.5-inch Deskstar has been used in desktop computers and external enclosures for years. The 2.5-inch Travelstar has also been widely used in laptops and portable storage devices. The high-end Ultrastar was an enterprise product which was shipped into servers and network attached storage units. It continues to be manufactured today by HGST and WD. A great many of the drives that reach us in a Seagate, WD or Iomega enclosure contain either a Hitachi Travelstar or a Hitachi Deskstar, regardless of what they say on the packaging. What the product says on the packaging does not tell you much about the physical hard drive contained within. The brand does not matter when determining how to handle failures; the fault decides that.
The name itself has a certain history. In 2000, the IBM Deskstar 75GXP was the “Deathstar” (a name given after it failed enough times to lead to a class-action lawsuit), and IBM sold its hard-drive division to Hitachi shortly after. What is largely unknown is how Hitachi rebuilt this product line; by the 2010s HGST products were regularly at the top of large-scale reliability studies, with many HGST products lasting longer than every other piece of equipment in the rack. If you’re looking for Hitachi recovery today, chances are yours is one of the good ones and has simply reached the end of a long life rather than failing early.
Three main types of failures result in most of what we see. The head failure produces the loudest noise: a repetitive clicking and grinding from the heads repeatedly trying to locate their references and reset. This requires a new set of matching donor heads; each time you turn on the system, this process repeats and damages both the heads that have failed and the areas of your platter where they were travelling. Bad sectors are the quietest type of failure. A sector failure results in the disk being recognised by the computer (it mounts); however, it will freeze up, take several minutes to open a folder, copy only some of the files, etc. Most likely the disk can be imaged, but it has to be done immediately, prior to further degradation of the disk’s surface. Firmware and electronic failures are the trickiest type of failure. In either case, the computer does not recognise the drive, and/or the drive fails to power up, even though the platters and your data are usable. Hitachi drives are no more likely to suffer any of these than other brands; they just live long enough to reach them.
This is the biggest misconception regarding cost in hard disk failure, and this is where we get direct and to the point. Data recovery programs work with drives that have been damaged logically, but are otherwise physically fine: deleted files, corrupted file systems, accidental formats. They do not fix a bad read/write head; they do not unlock a seized motor; they do not communicate with a drive whose firmware has “locked” you out. In fact, by using recovery tools on a mechanically failing drive, you are powering the area of failure continually while putting pressure on those same areas (whereby what was once a recoverable Hitachi may become irrecoverable). If your drive is clicking, whining, not recognised or generating some other unusual noise that it didn’t generate last year, the issue is hardware related and there isn’t anything software can do. Turn it off.
We do not treat drives differently based on whether they have a certain “badge”. Prior to touching anything, the drive will be diagnosed for faults. When the failure of a drive is mechanically related, we fit matching donor heads or repair the motor sufficiently to read the drive once. When the issue is electrical (i.e., the PCB has failed), we fix the board or flash new firmware into the unit. Once this is complete, we create a bit-for-bit, sector-by-sector image using specialised imaging hardware that reads softly around weak areas of the drive, and rebuild your files from that image, only from the good image and not from the failing original. This process is slower than simply plugging it in and running a scan and is why a drive which was shut down quickly typically represents a routine hard drive recovery case rather than a high-risk (or heroic) recovery case. Regardless of whether you sent us the Hitachi as an internal-only hard drive, inside an external enclosure, or removed from a laptop, our process remains the same.
Hitachi clicking, undetected, or grinding to a stop? Switch it off and don’t turn it back on again. That one decision will protect more of your data than anything else you can do. Diagnostics are free; quotes are fixed and written into an agreement prior to performing any work, and for most jobs, we won’t charge unless we recover your data. Honest advice over the telephone on 0113 322 3083 also doesn’t cost a thing. Once you get a quote, whether it’s via a phone call or using the online form, send it to us on Albion Street in Leeds (drop-off welcome, no appointment necessary), or if you’re further away in Yorkshire, send it to us insured.