Looking for advice on whether this 16TB Seagate Exos X16 is recoverable or if it's simply dead.

I have a TrueNAS SCALE system with two 16TB Seagate Exos X16 drives (manufacturer recertified) in a striped pool.

Before the failure, I was changing some BIOS power settings to reduce idle power usage. While the system was powered off, I unplugged and reconnected the SATA data and power cables. I didn't drop or hit the drives, just disconnected and reconnected them. The only thing I can think of is there may have been a little flex on the SATA connector because the case is cramped.

After booting, one drive immediately started failing.

What I've tried

• Different SATA cable
• Different SATA motherboard port
• Different SATA power connector
• Tested in Windows via a USB SATA dock

The issue follows the drive regardless of how it's connected.

Symptoms

• Drive is detected with the correct model, serial number, and capacity.
• Any read attempt (fdisk, dd, etc.) immediately returns I/O errors.
• smartctl can identify the drive but cannot read SMART data (Read SMART Data failed: scsi error medium or hardware error).
• dmesg shows repeated Medium Error, UNC, and Medium format corrupted errors, including failures reading sector 0.
• Windows detects it as a 14.9TB uninitialized drive (I did not initialize it).
• SeaTools detects the drive but immediately reports "SeaTools Test Failed."

Because the pool was striped, the failed drive has made the entire pool unavailable.

My question: Does this sound like an internal drive failure, or is it plausible that simply unplugging and reconnecting the SATA cables could have caused this? I'm trying to figure out whether I got unlucky with the timing or if I may have damaged something while reconnecting the drive, squishing it or rattling the connectors. Drive is amazon refurbished, and is 6 days before warranty end funnily enough.

Either of my portable HDDs occasionally automatically reconnect immediately after I eject them, and continue to do so until the PC is powered off. Windows 11, latest version. Based on the below things I tried (as per suggestions from Google), and the fact that it first happened with one USB port and eventually started happening with another, does it seem like a port hardware malfunction? Why does it seem to be "spreading"? Advice on fixing these ports, preventing it from happening to further ports, and/or workarounds to keeping the HDD ejected despite the ports malfunctioning?

(1) Already off: "Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options > Change plan settings {for selected plan "High performance"} > Change advanced power settings > USB settings > USB selective suspend setting".

(2) Already off: "Device Manager > USB Root Hub (USB 3.0) / Generic USB Hub {multiple instances} > Power Management > Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power".

(2a): Already off: same as 2) but for "AMD USB 3.10 eXtensible Host Controller - 1.10 (Microsoft)".

(3) Swapped cord.

(4) Tried a different portable HDD (same base product: WD 6TB My Passport, model number starting WDBR9S0060B).

(5) Restarted PC.

Update: Thanks everyone for your input, this sure blew up more than I thought it would 😅 I am totally in agreement that it’s not a great solution if it even is one at all.

I just thought as a temporary measure since the drive might be getting too hot.

I have landed on the conclusion that actually just having a towel in between helps keep the drive cool but not too cold to risk condensation. Also just putting a bottle of water on it as a heat sink seems to do the trick, doesn’t need to be ice.

Seems to pull the heat away as the contact is a better conductor than air.

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Pretty much as the title says, if writing 100’s of GB to the drive you a there a good way to prevent it from getting too hot? I noticed it was getting too hot to touch amd figured keeping it cool is a good idea.

I know there are risks of condensation but I’ve been keeping an eye on it and it never made it as far as the edge where it could potentially drip down into the connector. Since it has no vents on it I figure there’s little risk of condensation damage, my real concern is apparently they have lubricant inside that doesn’t like being too cold as it becomes more viscous.

What do you think? Okay to try and cool it down a bit or you wouldn’t risk it?

Hi! I'm writing this because I feel like i have a unique situation, and wanted to see if anyone could help! So I have 2 m.2 SSD slots on my motherboard, and I have a new 2tb SSD I'd like to put in. That being said, I also have a 256 SSD that windows is booting from, and I would like to change that to the 2tb m.2 im trying to put in. I have to make room in my pc to fit said m.2, so I was wondering if I transfered the data from one of my m.2's, like from a 500mb to a 2TB, then tried to transfer my C: boot drive to the ssd as well, would i lose data from one of the SSDs? Is there a way to do this without losing data?

EDIT: I should mention that HD0-3 Is my current hard drives, and HD4 is the one im trying to transfer to.
HD1 is where my windows is, and HD0 is the m.2 im trying to replace in my m.2 slot.

The drive comes from a HP CRVSA-02T1-75 Notebook from 2003..

Concerned about the noise on my new hard drive.
Any feedback would be appreciated

Thank you in advance

(ignore the fact they are on my lap)

Two HGST helium (I believe he6) 6TB drives, in good health, still write/read close to 200mb/s. Really happy considering a friend gave them to me, even if they had just over 70,000h, but only 60 power cycles. Obviously, used in a server.

I have them in RAID 1 via Intel Rapid Storage, and they seem to work great!

I don't need the data if it can be fixed without recovering it's ok

Hi! Sorry to cross post, but just wondering if anyone can shed some light.

Is my new hard drive basically cooked? I didn't clone the disk, and I've read that using windows to copy/cut and paste won't move the bad sectors, so assume those have occured from it getting stuck and shut down?

Is there anything to suggest why it was hitting 100% with 0 transfer rate?

Short of transferring everything back to my old drive, and reformatting and trying again, I don't know what to do... Other than rescuing the data and reformatting, and returning.

Thanks!

My Klev Cras C910 2TB died after 10 months of use, its not showing in file explorer or disk manager which I have noticed that this is a common problem with this specific drive. I made this post to see if anyone else has had this issue lol. And yes i did do an RMA hopefully things turn out good.

They say there are two types of people. Those who lost data and those who will. I fall into the first category. iPod Nano Gen5 for scale becuz I didn't have a banana

All either heavily clicking or just not spinning up, so want to recycle them.

Any easy way to prevent data recovery? For example breaking the sata pins with pliers. Or I will need to open all of them up and physically break the disks?

warga reddit, mau tanya
ssd merk ini apakah aman tidak ya untuk file kerjaan, mohon pencerahannya
apakah ada yang udah makai, bagaimana experience nya

I'm a HDD collector who collects old HDD's from old laptops and i had extreme luck, out of the 12 drives i have, not a single one had bad sectors.... Until moron of me dropped this drive while it was running (As an external drive a long time ago) and now decided to check smart for all my drives to see if one had bad sectors- my collection grew exponentially. accidentally (or not) plugged this legend of a HDD and RIP. 139 pending sectors. i was horrified because i broke my record of no failed HDDs because i dropped it like an idiot.

Well there's still hope. maybe its just a soft bad sector. i had a drive that also ran into the same problem, gave it a full wipe and back at green. there's still hope for this drive. (It was my first external HDD, for a user that was stuck with crappy usb2 flash drives, this is a really special drive to me)

Hi community just want your two cents on buying a used western digital purple surveillance hard drive. Wanting to upgrade my current 2 TB set up the hard drive.

Yes it's significantly cheaper than buying new.

The hard drive manufactured date is in 2016. The seller also attach crystaldiskinfo and indicates less than 50 hours usage and less than 20 power on count.

Can this be faked / does a factory reset bring it back to 0?

Seller indicated it was his backup drive for server.

As per ChatGPT, the crystal disk info is clear and is in very healthy condition. chat did raise a concern about the hard drive being 10 years old with the lubricant inside the hard drive, etc..
What do you guys think about buying this used hard drive? completely fine with such a low power count and power on usages?

From chat:
From the SMART report you showed me, I didn't see any obvious signs that the drive itself was failing.
However, there are two concerns:
1. It's an older drive
A hard drive built in 2016 is around 10 years old.
Even if it has very low power-on hours, components like the spindle bearings, lubrication, and electronics have still aged over time. Age alone doesn't mean it will fail soon, but it does increase uncertainty compared with a newer drive.

1. "Like new" can be misleading
   A drive manufactured in 2016 is not literally new.
   It could be:
   Old unused stock.
   Pulled from a system with very little use.
   Refurbished.
   A recertified drive.

I've changed my PS4 HDD with a bogger SSD. Now the old HDD can be useful but Sony use some format that make impossible any operation by computer so someone know how to reset it without use a computer?