Dropped External Western Digital Hard Drive-What now?

[jbitakis]

Hi I dropped my External Western Digital Hard Drive (2 TB) from my dining room table to the floor (hardwood floor). There is no visible damage but now NONE of my computers recognize the hard drive. I don't see any visible damage and I don't hear any goofy sounds (no clicking, etc.). But I cannot get anything off of the hard drive because the computers do not recognize it. What can I do? I called this nearby computer repair place and they are gonna try and get the data off ($60). But they are 50-50 on being able to accomplish this. Otherwise, they said that I would have to go to a Data Recovery place and I called one up and they would charge me an outrageous amount ($850!!!). I have important home videos and pictures on the Hard drive that I do want to recover. Is their a cheaper way?

[chicken264]

Don't be panic soon. Many times problems with external hard drivers are with the interface units not the actual drive.

So try with a hard drive to usb adapter or another external en closer before spending too much.

[piano632]

Hard to say with an external. It could be that just the enclosure electronics were damaged but the hard drive was spared. Or the hard drive could be damaged. If you can hear the drive spinning then you could try one of the data recovery tools on this site. If you can't hear the drive spinning, I would break open the enclosure and connect the drive internally or via another enclosure/dock to see if the enclosure was the problem.

[Cornucopia]

Above comments are good, and I would strongly recommend you try those first (or suggest them to the place that is going to be doing it for $60).

BTW, $850 is CHEAP for the complicated work a restoration facility is doing to something that is TRULY @#(#$ 'ed up. They are like Wizards.

Scott

[jbitakis]

Thanks, I will try all this stuff first because $850 is NOT cheap for getting a little data off a hard drive. It is a RIP OFF.

[jbitakis]

What data recovery tools are available on this site??

[Trippedout]

the small board could be the fault take it out plug it in your pc the board looks fragile to me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwQu37T1a50&feature=related

[lordsmurf]

Thanks, I will try all this stuff first because $850 is NOT cheap for getting a little data off a hard drive. It is a RIP OFF.

Not really -- not given the work, environment, tools and training involved.
I had to pay about twice that 3 years ago.

[smrpix]

Thanks, I will try all this stuff first because $850 is NOT cheap for getting a little data off a hard drive. It is a RIP OFF.

And what are the memories worth? Might be cheaper going forward to get a second drive and do backups -- but you know that.

Best of luck.

[piano632]

What data recovery tools are available on this site??

I guess it was another site I was thinking of. Try http://www.powerdatarecovery.com/ (it's free so you got nothing to lose by trying)

[themaster1]

The price reflect the efforts put, quality of the devices/softwares precautions used. Basically the guys are in dust free/air controlled rooms to not damage further the platters and play with specially designed softwares. Not to mention the guys are qualified (degrees etc..)
There was an article on wired.com some time ago.

Anyways,
what you want to do first imo is remove the drive from its enlosure and connect it in sata to your motherboard and see if it can be detected & read by windows

I've read also that putting the hdd in the fridge for a few hours helps (never tried myself) but people have reported to be a sucessful move.

Food for thought i hope

Edit:
i just read a DIY method, see here (single platter only):
http://www.wikihow.com/Swap-Hard-Disk-Drive-Platters

I like the idea only that if i'd have to do it myself i'd make some sort of mini dust free chamber in plexiglass with gloves at the right/left (attached to the case ) so i can manipulate and most of all, multiple fans placed on the side mainly (not the top) pulling air in->out (not the opposite)...and maybe dust filter all over

I don't think it would cost a lot maybe 150$ max (counting the price of the new drive you need to buy) and that would greatly reduce the risk for the platter. Dust is a killer

Anyway these days big drives (>500gb ) have a minimum of 2 platters so without the tool to realign the platters you're not going anywhere.

[smrpix]

I fully concur that your next best step is to remove the dive from the enclosure and hope it is the electronics on enclosure that are damaged, but let me ask a couple more diagnostic questions:

When you plug the drive in can you hear or feel it spin up?
Was it on or off when it fell?
Does it show up as a blank drive in explorer or not at all?

The WD enclosures have decent enough internal padding and dampening, so a fall from normal table height on a non-spinning drive is usually survivable.

[lingyi]

Warning...Wall of text below...sorry!

Edit: See some posts since I started to write this covering some of what I've written below. My post in a nutshell: take it ouf the enclosure, see if's recognized, try to repair (but DON'T open the drive), buy and run Spinrite.

First, did you already send the drive out for repair? If so, wait for their assessment before going on to anything else. I suspect they'll take the drive out of the enclosure and test it that way.

Before you go on the next steps, if you don't already have enough space for the recovered data or a spare drive, stop and take care of that first. You may have only one chance for recovery. Next, decide how much your data is worth. $850.00 is too high for you, but how much are you willing to spend? Set a price and go from there. You've already spent $60.00 and may spend another $100.00 - $300.00 or more, depending on what's required.

Okay, you have two separate issues. The drive not being recognized and data recovery.

First, the drive isn't recognized. If taking the drive out of the enclosure and connecting it directly to the PC doesn't work, then the drive's logic board may be bad. Search on Ebay for the EXACT same logic board or model drive and use the new board on the old drive. If it's recognized by the PC, you're part way there. Putting the drive in the freezer (not the fridge) MAY allow the drive to be recognized, but is risky and may work once, twice or never. In any case, there's the possibility of condensation in the drive that may kill it. As mentioned above, assess how much your data is worth. $50-$150 for a new logic board or drive or $0.00 which may cause more damage than it fixes.

Second, data recovery. Was the drive running when it fell? If so, it's possible that the drive head(s) crashed into the platters or broke off. You say you don't hear any "goofy sounds". Is the drive spnning? One of my external drives is so quiet that I have to hold it up to my ear to hear it running). If you're sure it's spinning, turn it off and gently rock it side to side to check is anything is loose. If so, something broke loose and will do more damage to the existing data by trying to run it. This is a job for the experts. Check out the WD site for their recommended recovery services which may or may not be less than $850.00 http://support.wdc.com/recovery/index.asp?lang=en&selregion=americas

Okay, drive is recognized, there really is "no goofy sounds" and nothing loose. You can start to try and recover your data. DO NOT run chkdsk or scandsk. Running either of these on your drive, may cause recoverable data to become unrecoverable. Also, keep in mind that data recovery on a damaged drive may take days (part of the reason for the $850.00 cost, not such a "ripoff" huh?) and may kill the drive due to the stress. The difference between a data recovery service is that if the drive 'dies', they may be able to place the platters into another drive and continue recovery.
BTW...DO NOT try and open the drive yourself. There is NO practical method for a home user to recreate the necessary clean room required to open and repair a hard drive at home.

That said, my choice for data recovery is SpinRite. It's $90.00 with no trial, but it's been a must have tool in my PC toolkit for for years and worth every penny. It can be set to test every data block on a drive and move the data from a bad block to a tested good one. I've recovered smaller drives (couple of hundred gigs at most) and that took days. I wouldn't be surpised if a 2tb drive would take weeks!

[sanlyn]

One argument against keeping one copy of all your stuff on one huge drive. I can't imagine losing 1TB to 2TB of data all at once. Well, ...I can imagine it, but it hurts when I do.