I dropped my laptop and my HDD in a caddy in the DVD drive doesnt work? how can i fix?

My laptop fell of a table and landed upside down on a marble floor,
the screen was fine but when i turned the laptop on it just kept loading,

i had a HDD in a caddy in my DVD drive and once i removed it everything worked fine, so i put it back in but it just loads forever at startup / Sony page with the circle just constantly spinning

So i took the HDD/Caddy back out and put the HDD in a external case and connected to the laptop via USB, but while the laptop recognises a new drive it doesnt have the name of the drive, just Local Disk (E
When u double click on the drive it loads for 2 minutes then a box appears with this error:

Location is not available

E:\ is not accessable.

The parameter is incorrect.


- there is no whirring or noise from the HDD when connected via USB, just a hollow airy noise which goes when unplugged

I have called a HDD repair compay here in the UK and they said the price could be anything from the £200 - £400
they thought as there ws no loud noises coming from the HDD that it could just need a software recovery

is there anyway i can do this myself, preserving my data,
there is probably like 80 GB of data on the 500 GB HDD, so not huge amounts,

All advice is appreciated
Thanks

 

If the data is important, pay the professionals. Otherwise, take a hammer to it to make sure no one else gets to your data.

(Sounds like the motor is disconnected from the platters).


Good luck.

 

sounds like its knocked the spindle of the platter and out of alignment so that my friend is buggered

there is no way you can do it yourself.
if you open the drive yourself then proceed directly to the rubbish bin.
it needs a air tight clean room (even cleaner than a hospital operating theatre) and those prices you mentioned above are very good. seen prices upto a grand before.

edit:

which hard drive is it. western digital, seagate or something else. if they said it might just need software you could try the recovery software on either of their websites.

 

As already said, if data is important, pay the pros, otherwise consider it gone. Sorry about your loss. Also a hard lesson learned on keeping regular backups.

 

You need a recovery professional with access to a clean room, external platter mounting systems and a lot of experience rebuilding filesystems. For the love of god, don't send it to a dodgy technician or attempt software recovery as if there is a collision between the head and platter, you might cause further damage if there is still contact.

 

I sold HDD controller and hammered the rest in similar situation. It taught me a good lesson - that regular backup is a must. Oh, and the most-most-most sensitive, precious data was backuped to my phone. =)

 

cough cough SSD cough no movable parts cough cough

 

thanks for all the replies, looks like im goimng to have to pay the £2-400.

MrDJ, what did you mean by your last post?
Do you think SSD's should be used instead of HDD, even for storage/backups?

i am using an SSD for the OS and programs

 

was just making the point about non movable parts in an ssd but if your spindle drive is just for storage then stick with it.

good luck with the clean repair.

 

Until the NAND or the controller dies, a firmware brick if you are lucky. When that happens, the number of qualified technicians who can perform a recovery drop by 90% plus the cost increases by x50 per gigabyte.

Backups, backups, moar backups

 

Which means they're indestructible? Fine, they're more resistant to drops. But they cost more too. Still, none of the diminishes the importance of backups.

 

I remember reading somewhere that optical discs, if treated properly, will last longer than any HDD or electronic storage device. Which is why for the most mission critical data (stuff that could ruin my life if lost), I keep an additional copy on a DVD, in addition to the other 3 copies stored on various media (SSD, HDD, USB).

 

It depends on the method used to burn the disc. Metallic stamped discs are rated to last at least 25 years. Consumer laser burnt discs can range from 3-10 years of data retention.
I personally keep multiple HDD arrays with a layered backup scheme.
Contrary to popular belief, HDDs are extremely reliable if you don't force them to operate under random workloads, minimal vibration and limited unit movement as the motor rarely dies, its almost always an issue with the read/write head and/or the actuators.

 

Call me paranoid, but I tend to think the weakest link in any hardware is the IC, which is why I still prefer storage media that doesn't involve any ICs for absolutely critical data. (which basically limits me to optical discs and paper)

 

As a consumer if data is important then you should be backing it up locally and then on a cloud service.

If it's super critical you could always back it up to tape and have a collection to off site storage and set up a tape rotation but that may be going a little far

 

Ha funnily enough my company actually does that for super duper hyper ultra critical data, although paper is the preferred medium over tape.

 

I heard the legendary formula for coca cola is stored on paper.

 

Not really. SSD's don't require a clean room and aren't susceptible to physical damage from a drop like a hard drive arm and platter. Fixing it is just a matter of connecting a new controller which should be much easier than scrubbing a hard drive, at least for someone with soldering skills.

But about backup, just backup to multiple locations and media. I back up to home server with local backup then backup to my sister's home server and also to a secure cloud service. Not to mention personal photos and videos also go on a hard drive to my parents house regularly.