HDD Broken - Any Ideas?

panthro

panthro

panthro

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I have (or had) a WD Scorpio Blue 2.5" in an Icy Box enclosure.
About a month ago I dropped it on the floor, only about 12 inchs from the table to the ground. Worked fine afterwards.
Today it just stopped working. All I did was nudge it out of the way (about an inch with my index finger) and it disconnected from my laptop and now it wont read. My laptop picks up that a removable storage item is plugged in, but I took the top off the Icy Box and could hear it trying to spin when I plugged it in but it wasnt, just made a clicking noise.
Where do I go from here? I have most of it backed up in the UK, but some important stuff on there that I didnt have backed up. Is it a lost cause?
 
The clicking sounds like a head crash to me, if so it's 100% toast. If the data is commercially valuable, you might be able to get a speciallist firm to recover most of it, but it will cost £1000s to do I expect.
 
Balls!

Edit - Its only 5 months old, bought from OCUK, would this be covered under warranty?
 
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Take it out of the enclosure and put it in a PC and see if it works, I have had two USB drives that i have dropped and the drive is fine but the PCB that converts it to USB and gives it power died.

(I would remove that word before you get a ban ;))
 
Have you tried it on a different pc? My 2.5" portable hdd can't get enough power from some usb ports, it will try to spin up, fail and make a slight clicking noise and repeat. If the hard drive is fubarred you could try the freezer trick, sometimes works long enough to get your data back.
 
As said a data recovery centre is your best option. It wont cost 1000's bit will cost a few 100. The more you fiddle the more expensive and less likely your data will be retrievable.

C'mon no one has a table that's 12inches high. And everyone knows not to flick hard-drives whilst on. You have physically abused the drive, no warranty should cover you for that.
 
Blackbadger said:
As said a data recovery centre is your best option. It wont cost 1000's bit will cost a few 100. The more you fiddle the more expensive and less likely your data will be retrievable.

C'mon no one has a table that's 12inches high. And everyone knows not to flick hard-drives whilst on. You have physically abused the drive, no warranty should cover you for that.
Click to expand...

Sorry I forgot you've been round my house and inspected my furniture. FWIW, I just measured it, its 15". Its a marble coffee table.

Did you see me use the word flick? No you didnt. If I mishandled my HDD I would have said so (as I previously did when I mention I knocked it off the table by accident).

Thanks to everyone else for the information.
 
I think dropping the drive onto a hard surface even from a height of 12" would definitely count as "mishandling", and would be more than enough to kill it (especially if it was running at the time). Whether it would be covered by the warranty is something you'd need to sort out with the supplier and/or the manufacturer, but I'd be surprised if they allowed for this contingency (not that I'd suggest you were less than completely honest with them of course). :)

If the missing data is valuable, I'd hand it over to a data recovery specialist as suggested - it's certainly not a lost cause, and it's very likely they'll be able to rescue the data, but it won't come cheap. If you do decide to go down this route, the less you mess around with the drive in the meantime, the greater the chance of success (and probably a lower bill as well).

I'd avoid the freezer trick BTW - with a modern drive with FDB bearings you're almost certain to make things worse rather than better.
 
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