Hitachi & HGST Hard Drive Data Recovery

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) was formed when Hitachi bought IBM’s hard drive business. HGST became part of Western Digital in 2012, and the HGST name was phased out around 2018, with the Ultrastar range continuing under the WD brand. Millions of Hitachi and HGST drives are still running in laptops, servers and NAS systems today.

HGST Ultrastar drives have an excellent reliability record, which means many are now reaching an age where heads and motors begin to wear. We recover data from every Hitachi and HGST family.

Hitachi & HGST Drives We Recover

Range / family	Example models & notes
Deskstar	Desktop drives such as HDS721010CLA332, HDS723020BLA642, HDS724040ALE640 and Deskstar NAS models.
Travelstar	Laptop drives, e.g. HTS545050A7E380, HTS541010A9E680, HTS721010A9E630 and Travelstar Z5K/Z7K.
Ultrastar 7K / He	Enterprise drives, e.g. HUA722020ALA330, HUS724030ALE641, HUS726060ALE610, HUH721008AL5200, HUH721010ALE604 (He10), HUH721212ALE604 (He12), and later WD-branded Ultrastar DC models.
External	HGST Touro, G-Technology G-DRIVE and G-RAID units (which often contain HGST drives).
Legacy	Hitachi Deskstar 7K series, Travelstar 5K/7K, and IBM-era Deskstar/Travelstar – see our IBM page.

Typical Hitachi / HGST Failures

• Heads stuck on the platters (“stiction”) – drive hums but does not spin up
• Degraded heads causing slow reads and growing bad sectors
• Service Area (firmware) corruption on Deskstar and Travelstar models
• PCB damage from power surges or incorrect adapters
• Helium Ultrastar failures inside RAID and NAS systems

Before you send your device – five things to avoid

• Switch the device off and leave it off – every power cycle can make physical damage worse
• Do not run CHKDSK, Disk First Aid, fsck or recovery software on a drive that clicks, beeps or is slow
• Do not open the drive or swap the circuit board – modern boards hold drive-specific adaptive data
• Do not reinstall the operating system or initialise the disk when prompted
• Keep liquid-damaged devices unpowered and bring them in as quickly as possible

Frequently asked questions