Did I just murder my internal? (not a clone of Shinakuma's thread)

I had my external sitting on the floor plugged into my computer and the phone rang. I stood up to get it and violently kicked over the drive. When I came back it was making a repeating long, low buzzing/beeping noise. It's not showing up in My Computer or the device manager. I've tried connecting via both USB and eSATA. I also opened up the rosewill case and reseated the hard drive (Seagate 1.5 TB 7200 RPM), all to no avail. Are my drive and data lost to me?

 

mhm sorry bro

 

That (literally) sounds like a bad drive.

 

Most likely your drive and data are history. What you did is equivalent to dropping the drive while it is running, probably the wrost thing you can do accidently to a HDD.

I don't know if your hard drive has a built in impact sensor but by now I am sure you probably have tried removing power from the HD and letting it set idle for a few minutes and then trying to power it back up.

The only thing I could possibly recommend, without much hope though, is to try the drive in another USB case or a desktop computer with SATA HDD's just to make sure your external case/circuitry is not damaged. I wouldn't hold my breath for it to work but worth a try.

 

Try freezing your hard drive for ~20 minutes. After that plug it into a desktop and try to salvage anything you can. If it doesn't show up after the freeze its done.

 

This sounds stupid but it worked on my friends iPod (160GB HDD) and my old Zen Micro mp3 player over a dozen times (also after dropping it): Caveman it.

Strike the hard drive on its thinnest side against a hard surface that won't damage the casing. You're trying to unstick the heads from the surface of the platter. Start out with light taps and progressively make them swifter. It will take a bit of force but you're not trying to destroy it. Make sure you're hitting the side so it's going thinways down. I don't know how else to describe it, but if you've ever seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the monks hit the books against their heads, it's NOT LIKE THAT, rotate it 90 degrees so the thinnest dimension is hitting the table.

I hope it's clear and I hope it works!

 

This is actually one of the reasons I only use 2.5" external drives... they are much more shock resistant than 3.5" drives (not to mention not needing a secondary power source). If I need massive storage, I keep it on a network, I don't keep it on a device that needs moved.

Wish I had better news, but I agree with everyone here that your drive is likely toast.