warmonkey.net

The other day I managed to break my external hdd (1 Tb Seagate Freeagent), which sucks pretty bad since I have about 20,000 mp3s on there, along with a whole load of strange pornography, and other stuff I wanted to keep.

I submitted an RMA ticket with Seagate, since I am only just over a year into a 5 year warranty, fully expecting to be told to send it back and get a replacement, but lose everything on the drive. Sure enough, they told me to do that, and if I wanted the data back, I could use their data recovery company of choice.

Since it was only the USB port that had snapped off, I pointed out that all it would take is them to ghost the info over to the new drive or let me open it and copy the data myself.

I was rather surprised when this arrived in my inbox:

Thank you for the additional information.

Your request has been approved to crack open your external drive, take it out of
the external enclosure and connect it internally to your system to retrieve your data.

It is not a guarantee that the data will be able to be retrieved but it is a great attempt. 

When you go on the website, it is recommended that you still process an
RMA and send me your RMA or order number. Please be sure to send me the RMA
number, since otherwise any drive return would be rejected. Usually when someone
opens their case, it voids the warranty, here we would like to make an exception
for you.

Awesome. But there’s more!

When you connect your drive internally you should be able to copy and paste the
data onto your computer so you can have your data, then send us the old
defective drive with all of its components (external enclosure etc). With the
Advanced option you'll be able to have the replacement drive right away so you
can place your data back on there. Or you can do the standard option and after
you are done copying and pasting your data you could return the drive and its
components and when we receive your drive you'll be issued another within 7-10
business days.

Now I just have to wait for my new SATA controller to arrive (hooray for living in the stone age) so I can get the data off.