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Restoring a Seagate hard drive using the SeaTools for DOS utility. Checking the hard drive

Hard disks Seagate, like any other company, is not immune to trouble. As a result of errors, malfunctions or viruses, the information on them may be at risk.

What to do if necessary files have become inaccessible? They can be returned using special programs, some of which we will look at in this article.

Photo: Seagate hard drives

Problems with HDD

Hard drive failures can occur for several reasons. They can be divided into two groups - mechanical and logical. Whenever mechanical problems most optimal solution will contact a service center, because they can be quite serious.

Signs of such problems are:

  • instability of the hard drive;
  • increasing its loading time;
  • the appearance of grinding, knocking and clicking noises during operation.

Logical (software) failures also lead to a variety of errors, including loss of information stored on the disk. Let's look at two of the most common problems.

HDD formatting

Formatting can be either accidental, caused by negligence by the user himself, or as a result of a system failure. This leads to the loss of all files stored on the hard drive. In this case, do not despair - the data can still be restored. The main thing is to isolate the hard drive and not save new data to it, as this can lead to the complete loss of previously recorded files.

Boot block failure

As a result of this failure, the installed operating system stops starting, which makes the information stored on the hard drive inaccessible. It arises as a result critical errors OS that can be caused by the action malware. IN in this case data can also be recovered.

SeaTools is a specialized program

To test and restore Seagate HDDs, a software package called SeaTools was created. This universal remedy to scan the disk for various types of errors and subsequent data recovery.

Composition of the utility

SeaTools is a package of programs, each of which can be downloaded separately.

It includes:

  • HDD diagnostic tools for Windows, allowing you to check disks with SATA interfaces, USB, ATA and SCSI;
  • HDD diagnostic tools for DOS, which will help you check SATA hard drives and ATA using a boot disk;
  • Seagate File Recovery– a utility for data recovery.

Note! Seagate File Recovery was developed primarily as a tool for working with Seagate drives, but this does not mean that the program only supports this brand of hard drive. It works not only with hard drives from other manufacturers, but also different types media – flash drives, memory cards, external HDDs.

Video: seagate restoration

Program installation

Let's look at the extremely simple process of installing the utility on a PC:

  1. download installation file for Windows (you can do this on the official website);
  2. save it to the folder selected on your computer;
  3. after the download is complete, double-click on the file to start the installation;
  4. follows the installer's instructions - select the directory where the program will be saved, confirm the choice;
  5. We are waiting for the process to finish.

Disk check

After installing the program, launch SeaTools. The utility will detect connected hard drives and offer to perform various tests.

After scanning, if there are errors, you can perform automatic recovery bad sectors and also get detailed information about each of them.

All of these features are available from the Basic Tests menu. If you have questions about working with the program, you can use the built-in help in Russian.

Recovering information using Seagate File Recovery

  1. So, let's start restoring files:
  2. launch the utility; go to the list certain devices
  3. (hard drives, flash drives, etc.); press right key mouse on the media of interest and select;
  4. "Scan" in the window that appears, click again"Scan"

and wait for the process of searching for deleted or damaged files to complete; Important! This search process may take long time


, depending on the amount of information being scanned. During this time, do not close the program or turn off the power.

Attention! Recoverable files cannot be saved to the original device. For them, you need to allocate space on another hard drive or flash drive.

Other Seagate HDD recovery tools

In addition to SeaTools, there are many other universal programs that serve this purpose. Let's look at some of them.

Recuva Recuva – powerful and simple utility

from the creators of such a popular product as CCleaner.


Let's start working with it:

R-Studio Another one popular program

Working with it looks like this:


Important! The scanning and recovery process may take a long time.

A utility similar to the previous ones, with a wide range of tools. With its help, you can find damaged partitions that are not detected automatically, scan, restore and save the necessary data.

If your choice fell on her, then:


PhotoRec 7

Despite its name, PhotoRec 7 is used to recover not only photos, but any data in general. It works with both hard drives and other media.

Let's start working with it:


In general, the return of information lost for one reason or another to hard drives Seagate is no different from working with hard drives from other manufacturers. To do this, you can use both the specialized SeaTools utility package and others. universal programs. The process itself is not particularly complicated and is quite doable for regular user. We hope our instructions helped you with this.

Hard drive recovery Seagate using the utility SeaTools for DOS

Preface.

This article is dedicated to self-recovery of sectors faulty hard disk without resorting to service or warranty service. I suggest you read the description of how to use this useful and fairly easy-to-use utility from the companySeagate.

SeaTools for DOS.

Utility SeaTools forDOS- intended for testing SATA or ATA hard drives from boot CD. It is a comprehensive and easy-to-use diagnostic tool that will help you quickly determine what is preventing you from accessing data on your computer or laptop hard drive. It includes several tests that will examine the physical surface of the hard drive for the presence of unusable sectors.

I’ll immediately make a small diversion - on the topic of storing information on the hard drive and about clusters. As you know, information on the hard drive is stored in clusters. A cluster is a minimal addressable element that contains several sectors. If one of the sectors included in the cluster is faulty, then there is a certain risk that all the information in this cluster may be unsuitable for further use.

SeaTools forDOS can scan hard drives with interfaces: SATA(Serial ATA) and ATA(PATA/IDE). Since the software boots into its own operating system, you can check HDD, no matter what operating system is installed on it. You can even test a new or completely empty hard drive. In addition, this version offers limited recovery and data protection against erasure. That is, there is a possibility that information from a bad sector of the hard drive cannot be restored; you can only mark it and not use it in the future. But basically the data recovery process ends with a positive result.

To begin recovery, we need to download a ready-made image for recording onCDdisk in format *. iso, which contains the program itself running in the formatDOSAnd boot files. Product link SeaTools for DOS - as of 10.09.2010 it's quite working.

Important! This program will not be able to detect external hard drives. In order to test devices with an interfaceUSB, You can use the utility SeaTools forWindows for testing external drives. It's about SeaTools for Windows will go below (see the corresponding paragraph at the end of the article, before the conclusion section), but for now let’s return to the initial topic.

Recording on CD:

After you have downloaded the file SeaToolsDOS221ALL.576.ISO, need to write it downCD disk. To do this, you can use any suitable recording program.CD disks , previously used and familiar to you. If you suddenly don’t have anything at hand, you can download this one ISO Recorder choosing by yourself suitable version for your OS . The link goes to the official website of the developer, where options for various OS: Windows XP, Windows Vista, etc.

After installing the program, the usual launch shortcut*.exeon the menu Start or you won’t find it on your desktop. However, by clicking right click on the previously downloaded file SeaToolsDOS221ALL.576.ISO, You you'll seethat at the very top of the context menu that appears, a new option has appeared "Write image to CD" . Select it and recording will begin onCD disk.

Important!Easily copy files to CD the disk does not work, the file must be written as image.

Launching the SeaTools for DOS utility:

Now that you have the program SeaTools for DOS just recorded onCDdisk, which is bootable, you need to boot from it onto the PC on which it is installed faulty hard disk.

Configuration Bios:

1. Check your configuration first Bios. When restarting your PC, at the very beginning, look carefully text strings dynamically displayed on the screen. In one of them with the keyword " Bios"a key combination will be offered, or a single key that brings up a menu Bios.

2. Then B You must set a specific loading order: 1. CD-ROM, 2. Hard drive. That is, change the order in such a way that, first of all, when loading the PC, access would be toCD d lawsuit, not the hard drive ( see fig.1).

3. Disk .

Fig.1. Changing Bios settings.

Starting loading from CD an offer from the program will appear SeaTools for DOS read the license agreement and accept its terms. To which you need to answer in the affirmative, i.e. agree. Then the window of the program itself will appear in which we will have to work in the future. And a small window indicating that information is being collected about disk drives connected to your PC. After collecting information is complete, find the button in the upper left corner of the screen "Basic test" and click on it ( see fig.2).

1."Short test"- quick test regarding disk performance Seagate. If quick test not supported by hard drive, SeaTools it just won't carry it out. This test takes about 2 minutes.

2. "Long Test"- Performs a full disk scan. This is commonly used to find and fix bad sectors.

3. "Acoustic test" - this way you can determine if there is noise in the system, whether it is caused by the hard drive, or something else.

Running hard drive testing:

Select the item from the drop-down menu " Long test"We need this particular test option, because it not only checks the surface of the hard drive for errors, but also corrects those found, which is what we need. " Long test"will require enough a large number of time to complete. Because this test produces a reading everyone sectors on the drive and the amount of time required to scan the entire surface of the hard drive will depend on the speed and capacity of the drives. Large disk capacities (200 GB or more) often require 2 to 4 hours of scanning time.

Fig.2. Button"Basic test " to select test options.

Start of testing.

After selecting a test option Long test in the lower left corner of the screen, in a special panel for displaying the actions performed, the following message will appear: " Started Long test", as well as the date and time the testing began ( see fig.3). The following will also appear: the process completion line and the percentage of completion of the testing process.

Fig.3. "Started Long test" and the beginning of testing the hard drive.

The utility has begun checking the surface of your hard drive to determine if the sectors are unsuitable for recording information. Monitor the progress of the test in a special panel " Test Progress"(Fig.4), which also displays the numeric identifier of the current sector being checked on the hard disk surface.

Fig.4. "Test Progress" panel and identifier of the current sector being checked.

On average, passing 10% of the surface will take about 10 - 15 minutes, provided that this surface does not contain errors. In this case, checking the hard sectors disk goes quickly and immediately “in batches” checks thousands of sectors. This can be easily seen by how the value of the sector number changes. For example, in the previous screenshot the value is 246631450, in the next second it may already be 246679450.

As long as no errors are detected, you can safely consider this part of the hard drive to be absolutely working and suitable for recording. But at a certain point in testing, the program will begin to detect errors ( see fig.5). The testing speed will drop sharply, the program will begin to carefully check every subsequent sector of the surface one at a time.

Fig.5. "Test Progress" panel - bad sectors detected.

Let me allow myself one more distraction. By its structure modern wheels maintain spare sectors for redistribution purposes. As a rule, bad sectors are poorly read long before reading cannot be done at all. In this case, the actual data of the failed sector is saved and transferred to a new sector - a spare one specially designed for this purpose. This ensures the safety of information in this sector and does not endanger the safety of the entire cluster of information.

At some point during testing, there will be 100 errors and the program will display a corresponding message on the screen, suggesting that they need to be corrected ( see fig.6):

Fig.6. A message that Long test detected the specified (100) number of errors.

Click " Done".The program will present to you those sectors that were found to be faulty and will offer to mark them so that they will no longer be used in future work. It will also perform the procedure of transferring information contained in bad sectors to other sectors of the hard disk suitable for normal operation.

Of the four options offered, we need to choose the last one. The idea is to mark all hard disk sectors displayed in the generated list for their further recovery (see fig.7).

Fig.7 Suggested options for action in relation to the found bad sectors.

Fig.8 Recovery process bad sectors.

With the beginning the process of recovering bad disk sectors, in the lower left corner of the screen, in a special panel for displaying the actions performed, the inscriptions will appear " Started Short DST", " Short DST PASSED" and again " Started Short DST" And " Short DST PASSED" (see fig.9) . This indicates the passage Short test (Short test) which runs twice and is engaged in marking bad sectors. After secondary message " Short DST PASSED" the program will stop testing .

Fig.9 Panel displaying the actions performed.

And at the end of the process Short DST T The current test is completed, but as you remember, not the entire surface of the disk was checked, but only a part of it containing 100 errors. This does not mean that it has been verified all hard disk. So you should restart " Long test"the entry will appear again " Started Long Test ". Repeat while he checks that area (!) which just now already checked Naturally, it will not detect errors there and only then will it actually begin checking an area that has not yet been scanned and may contain bad sectors. Will dial 100 again others errors and suggest correcting them. The entire operation is performed many times (as many times as necessary to check the entire surface of the disk and eliminate all errors).

Although you may have to carry out this test only once and the number of errors will not exceed 100. In this case, the program will simply offer to correct the errors that it found and the test will end.

Perhaps the mechanism for searching for bad sectors is not perfect and makes it necessary to constantly concentrate a lot of attention on it and monitor the progress of execution. But you can forgive the developers for this minor inconvenience. After all, as a result, we get the result we want. At the end of the tests, our hard drive is fully functional, everything bad sectors marked as unused for recording and storing information.

SeaTools for Windows.

At the very beginning of the article, I indirectly touched upon the topic of what to do as owners of external hard drives. There is another product for you - SeaTools forWindows.It works in a window familiar to us, launched directly from operating system (see fig.10):

Fig.10SeaTools program for Windows.

Test options:
· SMART Check
· Short drive Self Test 20 to 90 seconds long
· Long Drive Self Test may take up to 4 hours, progress in 10% increments
· Drive Information can be saved to the Log file
· Short Generic three-part test
· Long Generic progress in 1% increments, sector repair option for USB external
· Advanced Tests see section 3 below

I don’t think it makes sense to describe all test options. Built-in " Help"gives a pretty good idea of ​​this.

I’ll just add that to thoroughly check the entire surface of the hard drive, as in another version of the program forDOS,choose an option"Long Drive Self Test"if it doesn't work, try this option " Short Drive Self Test"if it doesn’t work either, your hard drive is probably seriously faulty and you should contact the company from which you purchased it for warranty or service.

Already familiar to usLong test has a 10% "step" of scanning the surface of the hard drive. With large disk space, 10% progress can take about 15 minutes. An apparent lack of activity often gives the impression that the drive or software stops responding. Please do not rush to interrupt testing if the period of time that has passed since the start of testing does not exceed the standard time to complete the first 10%. Unfortunately, this 10% detail is the industry standard.

Conclusion.

And finally, I would like to wish you success in testing your hard drive, so that all errors are corrected, performance is fully restored and does not cause any complaints, and of course, so that you do not experience any new problems. Good luck!

© Fedor Balyasnikov, September 201 0

SeaTool for DOS is a comprehensive, easy-to-use diagnostic tool that helps you quickly determine the cause of your inability to access data on your computer or laptop. It has several tests to study physical media in a Seagate or Maxtor disk drive, as well as in drives third party manufacturers. Here we consider the old (text) and new (graphic) versions.

To use SeaTools for DOS, you need to download an image for a floppy disk or bootable CD.

Creating a floppy disk

To create an image on a floppy disk, you will need one 1.44 MB floppy disk. Click the .EXE file you downloaded from the Seagate website and follow the onscreen instructions.

Creating a bootable CD with an .ISO image file

This utility program doesn't detect external drives. For these, use SeaTools for Windows.

SeaTools for DOS, graphic version
When loading it will open license agreement with the end user.

To continue, simply click the I accept button.
The main menu page will open.

In the Basic menu:

  • Short test- start DST test Seagate drives. If the drive does not support DST, Seatools runs a read check. Testing takes approximately 2 minutes.
  • Long test
  • Acoustic test- reducing the disk speed, which makes it possible to understand whether the noise in the system is related to the disk or something else.

Advanced Features

Below is a screen showing the progress and results of the process.

  1. The model number and serial number of the selected drive.
  2. Disk status and supported features.
  3. POH - operating time; and disk temperature in Celsius.
Click the View log button to open the log file after testing is complete (there isn't much more information than there is on this screen).

Text version
After downloading SeaTools, the license agreement will open.

Read it and press Y (Yes) to accept or N (No) to close the program. Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to scroll.
After accepting the terms of the agreement, the testing screen will appear.

  • D or 0-9- switching disks - selecting disks to perform actions (see the number in the device area).
  • S - short test- launching self-test (DST) of Seagate drives. (If the drive does not support DST, Seatools runs a read test.) The test takes about 2 minutes.
  • L - long testing- launch full scan disk. Typically used to find and fix bad sectors.
  • Z - delete all- erasing data from the disk. Good for removing damaged or irregular partitions. ALL partitions and data are deleted from the disk. Fast and slow deletion is supported.
  • A - decrease disk speed (for acoustic testing)- reducing the disk speed, allowing you to check whether the noise in the system is related to the disk or something else.
  • C - container installation- allows you to set the disk capacity and bypass the usual limits of 32 GB and 137 GB. It is also used for disks whose capacity is reduced by a chip.
  • V - view log file- extract the log file for viewing.

This is followed by explanations of the colored text at the bottom of the screen.
White text: device (for example, device 0) and its model and serial number.
Text highlighted in yellow: motherboard with chipset.
Sea green text: Does the motherboard support 48-bit logical block addressing and maximum amount The LBA for this drive, as well as its capacity.
S.M.A.R.T. state. If SMART is disabled, testing is not necessary. Replace the drive.
Green text: DST (Disk Self Test) support status. If DST support is available, it is used for testing.
Text highlighted in blue: operating temperature - current and max. Logged Temperature - Useful to see if overheating is causing a problem or failure of the drive. Normal operating temperature see product manual. Worst Temp - the most heat during disk operation.
The most commonly displayed value is 253 degrees Celsius; this means that the drive simply does not support temperature reading. There's nothing to worry about.
POH = operating hours- the total operating time of the disk over its entire service life.


Acoustic testing

If you select this function, the rotation of the disk will begin to slow down, and it will be possible to understand whether it is making noise or other components (for example, a computer fan). The disk will slow down until the user presses the button.
The pop-up window will remain on the screen for a few seconds until the drive reaches its original speed.


Installing the container

  • S- 32 GB capacity setting: used when using ATA drives with older ones motherboards, which are blocked if the disk has more than 32 GB. This command sets the disk size to 32 GB. If capacity losses are too great, consider installing an ATA controller that provides full support disks over 32 GB.
  • R- return to maximum capacity: used to return ATA and SATA drives with reduced capacity (manually or spontaneously) to the maximum size.
  • M- manual installation: often used for ATA and SATA drives as an alternative unsuccessful attempt return to maximum capacity. Sometimes used to install a single disk capacity in RAID array(set the size as a specific number of sectors on the disk).
  • Q- return to the main menu.

Complete data deletion
Main menu commands: Z-Erase Drive - this is a command for completely erasing data.

In the Zero Fill submenu there is following commands.

  • Z- fast complete removal (the first 63 sectors of the disk are cleared instantly).
  • A- complete removal (all sectors of the disk are cleared, the process can take many hours).
  • F- complete deletion by time, where T defines the time.

Disk information
Yellow text at the bottom of the main menu window.

List of detected hard drives

  • Device number(Device number) - allows you to select a disk to scan.
  • Model number
  • S.N.- serial number
  • FW- firmware version - applies to SCSI and SATA products and new ATA products.
  • Controller(Controller) - the chipset to which the disk is connected. Used to solve some SATA and capacity problems. On older chipsets, there may be a 28-bit LBA limit due to which only SATA1.5 Gbps transfer rates are supported.

If the drive does not appear in this area, turn off your computer and make sure it is installed correctly.
About configuring drives various types see the installation help page.


Log file
The log file is stored on bootable media, if it can be written to, or (when loading from a CD) in memory. Format: serial number.LOG
Example: 5NF0R4RC.LOG
To view the log in the program, press V.
To close the Log Viewer, press Escape.

Status Check (During DST)

When testing, a progress indicator is displayed at the top of the screen, and the results are displayed in the middle.
After testing is completed, the results remain in the middle part, and commands appear at the top.

Fixing bad sectors (long testing)

If at long testing If damaged blocks are found, a window will appear asking you to select further actions.
The following window appears at the end of the scan or after the user stops testing if bad sectors are found on the disk.

Hello, friends! In this article we will understand the topic - Hard Drive Diagnostics. The reason for writing this article was a message from relatives - our operating system has been installed for a maximum of two months, after which glitches begin and we have to reinstall it. Even after I installed Windows 7 for them, complaints began. I had no doubt about the operating system. It was already installed on more than 10 computers. I tested the RAM, replaced the thermal paste on the processor, cleaned the system of dust - nothing. Then I tested the entire system using the system stability test (functions of the AIDA64 program). Everything is okay.

After repeated successful testing, enlightenment came. Checking the hard drive completely slipped my mind. I carried out diagnostics of the HDD first by a third party HDD program Regenerator. Having discovered errors (8 unreadable sectors), I ran the check again using a program from the manufacturer Western Digital. The latter confirmed the malfunction and the hard drive was sent to a service center under warranty. Read on to learn how to diagnose your hard drive...

Diagnostics using the operating system is what can and should be used first. To do this, open the main Start menu and select Computer. Right-click on the partition and call context menu and select the item Properties

Disk Properties opens. Go to the tab Service and in the section Checking for errors press the button Check

This will be Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows.

The WinDlg_v1_28.zip archive will be downloaded, which can be opened using the 7-zip or WinRar program in the same way as a file with the rar extension. Unpack and run the Setup.exe file.

When finished, click Ready

Launch the SeaTools program again

Searches for supported drives. Need to wait a little

Then, accept the license agreement again

To diagnose a hard drive, the Short and Long universal tests are sufficient

To be safe, choose Long lasting universal and wait for it to finish. If the test does not pass, follow the instructions and if the program does not fix the disk, bring it under warranty.

In the Basic tests menu there is an item Repair all. I have not tried this function. I’ll try as soon as I get a suitable hard drive.

Restoring the Seagate HDD

10_21_2013 A few months ago, bring a 160 GB Seagate hard drive without warranty. A long-term universal test produced an error. When connecting to another computer, I was able to copy all the important information from this disk without any problems.

To restore functionality we used Additional tests

A warning window opened saying that you can activate Additional tests using the key F8

By clicking on F8, the window closed and the Additional tests section appeared. Since our data was saved, I chose Full erase (SATA)

Another warning popped up

Scrolling the screen in this message with the slider, it was discovered that to start a complete erase, you need to press F8. After pressing, erasing started.

When the process was completed, I ran the Long-Term Universal Test again. The test was passed. After that we reinstalled the image working system using Norton Ghost. And until this moment no one complained.

Conclusion

In the article diagnosis of hard disk you learned how to check your hard drive (HDD) for errors. Here we looked at two methods: built-in checking using Windows and check special utilities from manufacturers. In a combat situation I like to use it diagnostic utilities. Since this, for me, is 100% an option. If the disk passes the test, everything is fine. Otherwise, we will take it for repair under warranty. This is why in the article on choosing a hard drive I attach such importance to the warranty. It is necessary that she be 3 years old. This is a whole 3 years without a headache. Naturally all necessary guarantee period it is good to handle the hard drive, because service center They look closely at the scratches.

The main thing I want to convey to you is. Hard drives are consumables. Like cartridges for a printer. You need to have at least two copies of your important data on two different drives. For example, on an internal and external hard drive. One fails, buy a new one, restore the data from the backup one and you are happy again. In order not to buy often, look at the same guarantee. I wish it was longer. Another great option is to use Windows 7 archiving.

I have not encountered any problems with Samsung hard drives. I couldn't find any utilities specifically for these disks. If anyone has information, please share in the comments. For now I will check them with a utility from Seagate or WD.