Dropped External HDD Help!

Hey,

I didn't have a backup, yes i'm an idiot, moving on.

So Yesterday my external hard drive dropped about 1-2 feet onto a carpeted service while plugged in (long cord). When I plug it in now, It makes a constant clicking noise which I believe is the arm going back and forth trying to read the data. With the research I've done, I believe the arm broke as it hit the ground because since it was plugged in, as it wasn't in a locked down mode.

My computer doesn't pick up the drive at all, neither by the bios or disk management (etc). I want to recover my data, and I was wondering if you guys recommend any data recovery specialist that do a good job ON THE CHEAP. I can't afford to spend $200+ fixing this as i'm a struggling college student. Thanks!

Stradevarius

 

Check with your college's IT dept. They might have an agreement with a data recovery company for the students and staff.

 

Good idea WackyT, all data recovery services I know of start at ~$900 and that is with no guarantee of recovering any data either.

Try the usual steps:

Put the HDD in a sealed bag with as much air removed, put in the freezer for a few hours. Remove from the freezer, let it sit at room temperature for a few minutes (15-20...) and then immediately plug it into a desktop's SATA and Power ports (for your single, best chance of reading something off the drive).

Good luck.

 

Good idea, i'll call tomorrow.

Yeah the freezer didn't work. I got a few quotes and they all started at 1500+ so that's not an option. I actually have another 120GB Toshiba drive (one that failed is also Toshiba), so I might try a transplant on my own tomorrow where I switch the platter between the two. Only thing I need for that though is a 2 mm torx screwdriver...

Thanks for the help so far! Any other suggestions?

Stradevarius

 

Don't think transferring platters will work. From what I remember of a similar discussion, HDDs are assembled in clean rooms and if a single piece of dust is present on the platter during reassembly it'll fudge things worse.

 

Yeah, at the most, switch over the electronics from the exact same (including firmware version) HDD.

If you take out the platters 'at home', you may as well finish the job and take a hammer to it (unless you have a electron microscope, you won't read any more data from these platters anyway...).

 

Yep, opening up the drive will pretty much kill it in anything other than a clean room. Hopefully, you didn't have any critical data on it.

 

So this usually works with smaller drives but if you have NO OTHER OPTION then you can caveman it. I've successfully cavemanned my old Zen MicroPhoto and my friend's 80GB iPod so far after they've been dropped, but never anything larger.

This applies best if a head has crashed onto the platter or is stuck. If you hear a constant hum and clicking then your drive might be a caveman candidate.

To caveman a drive:
-Find a hard surface that will not get damaged
-Remove power from the drive
-Firmly hit the drive (do not smash!) WITH ITS SMALLEST SIDE (the "height" of the drive if it is resting horizontally) against the hard surface. You want to strike the surface so that the plates inside are perpendicular to it, NOT PARALLEL.
-With each set of firm hits you should power up the drive again and see if it is spinning freely again.
-Progressively increase the strength of each round of hits to try and unstick any crashed heads.
-Pray to your favorite deity.
-If successful and the drive is read, there are likely damaged clusters so don't expect stellar performance or reliability out of it. Try and replace the drive when budget permits.

 

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!
I tried the transplant, following this guide for help Guide: Open hard drive surgery but unfortunately my drives weren't compatible.

In the end I actually consider this a blessing in disguise because it inevitably would have happened, and it happening during summer and not during school finals is a huge relief. I just finished re-downloading my music collection, videos were already backed up, and I didn't really have any important documents.

Now I'm going to have a 2 TB drive that I plug into that backups up all my partitions seamlessly and effortlessly. I've learned my lesson, mainly that always back-up and also that HDD's are super fragile.

Stradevarius