Dropped Hard Drive
How to Recover Data from a Dropped Hard Drive
Hard drives are very sensitive to any form of external force. Often the drives I get have been dropped on the ground from a height of more than a few feet. This is especially true with external hard drives.
External hard drives, also known as portable hard drives, have physical moving parts. Dropping an external drive or hitting, or bumping it leads to the external hard drive failing. A jolt or drop can result in the liquid bearing seizing or more commonly the read/write heads suffer physical damage. Hard drives that experience more severe shocks from being dropped from over 2 feet on to a very hard surface can not only damage the bearing and or heads but also the platters can actually shift off center.
Contact me for Data Recovery Service on a Dropped Hard Drive.
If You Hear Clicking, Stop
Dropped drives will often click. The sound is the platters, arm or head of the hard drive are damaged or misaligned from the drop. If the head is trying to locate the data that it is searching for on the platters and it cannot find it, the arm will move back and forth across the platters. The head hits a stop every time it goes back and forth searching, which makes the clicking noise. At that point there you should get in touch with a data recovery specialist.
Do Not Try Software
Any “DIY” or software methods fix the drive or recover your data. You won’t be able to recover data on the external hard drive since the problem is physical issues. If your hard drive was dropped, the software will not recover it. Attempting a software recovery often makes a recovery worse as you are running the drive in a failed state. Drives run in a failed state often end in data loss or more serious damage, and higher recovery costs.
What You Can Try
When you drop a hard drive if you do want to take a risk and attempt recovery yourself. You can try to identify if there is a problem with the USB enclosure. If your hard drive is kept in an enclosure, there are great chances that it’s the enclosure that corrupts, instead of the drive itself. You can connect the drive internally or with another USB enclosure to test it.
If you need to retrieve the files stored on your dropped external portable hard drive, contact me. I will review your options for getting your data back.