HDD not working after accidental drop

A

Arjun

Skilled
I was moving hardware to my new cabinet , while installing the hdd i accidentally dropped it. Since then its not getting detected. Since i installed a new PSU also, i swapped the power and sata cables but it was still not working. There is no visible damage on the casing, can anything be done to revive it or its permanently damaged.
 
Look for any damage near sata and power connectors. BTW how old it is? Also there is a chance that the disk platter got stuck with the actuator arm due to sudden shock.
 
The head might have got damaged and if that is the case you may need to do recovery from external HD recovery service. Do not try to run the HD as it may further damage the platter. Check with the recovery service near to your place to ascertain the damage.
 
This is why I no longer trust HDDs with my data. They damage easily due to moving parts. You should have backed it all up on an SSD. Data recovery too gets quite expensive. How important is the data and are you willing to pay recovery costs? I have heard it runs into tens of thousands to lakhs.
 
technofast said:
The head might have got damaged and if that is the case you may need to do recovery from external HD recovery service. Do not try to run the HD as it may further damage the platter. Check with the recovery service near to your place to ascertain the damage.
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What about keeping it in freezer, does it actually work in drop cases?
 
Doing any such methods is a hit or miss. Even if it works the disk is no longer reliable and you should've had backups of your data if it was that important.

Mechanical disks are not meant to absorb the level of shock you gave them it's highly likely it's damaged.
 
john1911 said:
What about keeping it in freezer, does it actually work in drop cases?
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It will certainly not work if it was dropped as the head might have got damaged. The OP can give it a try if he is not going to do a recovery.
Arjun said:
It is 10 years old but has important data
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You should have been extremely lucky that a 10 yrs old HD has held together for so long. If the data is not backed up your only option is professional recovery which will definitely cost you a huge sum.
 
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Freezer methods works in situations where its a very old failing hdds. Any physical damage and it wont work.
Same goes for GPU oven what method. It only works for very old gpus which needs to be powered for a relative shorter period before throwing them.

If the data was of that importance you should be maintaining a parallel copy of it on another hdd. If not then either opt for data recovery labs if data is really worth the expense of recovery costs or cry a lot once for all and start from scratch!

One more thing, shift data from hdds to ssd as even if ssd falls, data wont be lost!
 
nRiTeCh said:
Freezer methods works in situations where its a very old failing hdds. Any physical damage and it wont work.
Same goes for GPU oven what method. It only works for very old gpus which needs to be powered for a relative shorter period before throwing them.

If the data was of that importance you should be maintaining a parallel copy of it on another hdd. If not then either opt for data recovery labs if data is really worth the expense of recovery costs or cry a lot once for all and start from scratch!

One more thing, shift data from hdds to ssd as even if ssd falls, data wont be lost!
Click to expand...
Freezer method? I had never heard of this until today. Wow. How does that work?
 
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