I think ive broken my hdd by dropping laptop, can i recover my data still?

Hi,
Yesterday i dropped my ASUS laptop on the floor when it was on from about 5 feet high, it landed upside down, on the screen side

As soon as it dropped it started making a weird 'derrrr duuhh, derrrr duhhh' sound constantly with brief pause and beep between the derrr duhhhh
as its a western digital drive i googled it and it says its due to "hard drive with stuck spindle trying to spin up with siren."


The computer doesnt load beyond the ASUS startup screen and speaking to their technical team are sure the hdd is broken

Ive disconnected the hdd and using a casing plugged it in via usb in another laptop to retrieve my data, but it doesnt load / open and just makes the derrr duhhh repetition


So is there any other way i can retrieve my documents?

thanks

 

Looks like hardware failure, unfortunately only things to try are to replace the electronics board for the HDD or take it into a specialist to recover the data. The speclialist should take it apart and then under clean lab conditions recover the data manually from the disk. Can be expensive though around £500.

 

hi
I work on quite a few of these cases. the odds are actually pretty good that you can at least recover data.

the surest way to deal with it is to attach the drive to the sata bus of a known good pc, and use something like Ultimate boot disc to load. At this point from what you've said you don't know if the rest of your laptop is ok.

If it were me working on it, I would first try to get coherence by attaching to sata 1 on my lab mule [win7 machine] and see if disk manager can make it accessible. if not, then I'd shut down, move it to port 0, boot with UBD and go to HDD recovery menu, load parted magic and see if it can be mounted.
If it can mount under Parted you should be able to access folders and grab the data. if it cannot be mounted at all, then you suspect a head issue.
sometimes the mechanical issues can be persuaded either by cold or heat - hence the idea of putting the drive in a freezer for a few hours then immediately try the boot disc again [use gloves or something to handle cause the tiny drives will rapidly heat up just from handling.]

let us know how far you get.

 

Take out the HDD and use a USB to Sata/IDE adapter to hook to another computer USB and see what you can recover from your HDD for the data and files you created during that time. That is your best solution right now as it sounds like the HDD took a pretty nasty hit from the fall. This way you will be able to recover all you data or much as you can before it finally give you the death clicks....

 

this will work sometimes. If in device manager you either get no appearance whatsoever, or you have a handshake but cannot bring it online ["drive not ready"] it does not mean the drive is toast. that's why I mentioned the other measures: I have seen "dead" drives appear with that method. :hi2:

 

If the platters or actuator arms or motor is physically damaged (which it sounds like), then it's going to be tough to retrieve the data yourself - if at all possible. Chances are that you will need to have the data professionally extracted by a lab, as they may need to open up the casing of the drive to gain access to the platters. Said service is definitely not cheap.

 

thanks for the replies,
i have tried taking the faulty hdd out and connected it via usb to a different laptop, but the 'derr duhh' sound just starts and the laptop its connected to doesnt acknowledge or read it

i have inserted a spare 150gb internal hdd into my laptop (the one i dropped) and installed the OS and everything works fine, so looks like only the hdd is damaged,
i just need to get that data on the hdd
i will try the suggestions to recover my data

 

I agree with Prostar. OP mentioned having tried an external enclosure from the get go. It is obvious mechanical issue. But put it in the freezer in the external enclosure, say three hail Mary's and try again. This has worked for me.

 

Sounds like a physical broken arm or mechanism, freezing won't have any effect. Not only that, but the risk of condensation may make chance of recovery of data a lot harder.

That trick used to work on much older hard drives because of how they were made and the materials they were made of. We're talking hard drives circa 2006 and earlier.

 

Maybe worth trying fridge method if you think you're HDD is 90% over the edge (a goner), it didn't work for me but has worked for the lucky few.

If I remember correctly I think you just put the HDD into a zip lock bag and put it into the fridge over night, since the HDD is basically a gonna anyways it's might be worth a try.

 

i've just put the non-loading drive in an external case and put it in the freezer
what are hail marys? hours?


putting the drive in a freezer for a few hours then immediately try the boot disc again

what boot disc? do you mean the windows 7 64 bit disc?

wouldnt it be quicker once its out of the freezer to just attach it to a different laptop via usb and see if it reads the hdd?

 

LOL! No no, he was joking. Putting it in the freezer won't fix mechanical/physical damage.

And a hail Mary is an angelic salutation; a prayer for the intercession of the virgin Mary.

 

oh so all the freezer recommendations were just jokes? kinda pointless
better get it out the freezer!
thought it was a bit odd

so out of all the recommendations to recover my data, which are serious suggestions?

 

The freezer part is not a joke, it has worked in extremely rare cases. moer than likely though since the arm was not parked you have knocked it off the platter or the mechanism is total toast. it is hard to say exaactly where you are now other than this shows why you should always keep backups of curent data. It just takes one split second mistake to loose hours of work and alot may not be reproducable................

 

My only suggestion is to take it to a professional - preferably someone that will do a free quote, as I suspect they will not be able to use traditional end-user software to access your data for backup. That way, they can assess the damage, and definitively recommend taking it to a depot/lab or not.

 

from a bit of googling, it seems people recover data on hdd for £99

so could i not just unscrew the hdd casing i re-place the arm?
or is it harder/more complicated than that?

how do you know the arm wasn't parked?
the laptop was turned on and running when i dropped it, if that makes a difference

 

£99 is likely when the drive is still physically alright and the problem lies somewhere else. HDDs are made to be free of dust, if you open it up and replac some parts, you'll likly incur further damage on the drive. Recovering data from a truly dead HDD costs thousands of $ in North America. They have to open it up in a clean room, read from the platters and then try to reconstruct the data which is very time consuming and a delicate operation overall.

 

The mechanical structure and configuration/allocation is more complex than that. You need an engineer to precisely park the actuator arm. As tijo said, it's possible you can get your data for said price, as long as the damage isn't severe.

 

oh ok, if the fault in the hdd is due to the arm being knocked off the platter, if im very clean and careful, could it just simply need the arm to be re-positioned?

i will try and get some quotes tomorrow, but if its costing over £100 i wont bother , and i can still give it a go myself, its going in the bin anyway so might as well try

 

I really don't advise you to open the casing and play with the mechanics at all. It takes precise configuration, as the platters are read and written to via a magnet at the end of the arm, that needs to be placed at a very precise distance from the disks. You'll most likely do more harm than good by trying to fix it yourself (no offense, of course) - not just from tinkering, but also, you can't have any dust or foreign particles get on the platter(s).

 

ProStar is correct. It could have been just knocked off, bent or other unseen issues. This all has to be done properly in a clean room as well. This is why they charge and get a nice sum.

Now if you do not care about the data, and just want the experience, then I would say go for it. If you care about the data you could end up doing even more damage................