The fault · shock damage
Dropped drives come to us from all over Maidenhead. First, do not switch it on to see whether it still works: that attempt is usually the best chance the drive has left, and it gets spent on nothing. Parked and still, a mechanism will absorb a knock that would surprise you. Turning, its heads ride a few nanometres above the surface with nowhere in the assembly to give. The same fall lands very differently depending on one thing, and that is whether the platters were moving.
Describe the fault to an engineer
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| The signs | The likely cause | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| Clicking ever since it fell | Impact has taken the heads off track, leaving the drive to retry and retry | Switch it off for good |
| It beeps since the drop | The spindle cannot turn: either the heads have stuck down onto the platter, or a bearing has seized | Do not tap it free |
| Not detected since the fall | Could be collapsed heads, a dead spindle motor, or a cracked board or socket | Have it inspected, not run |
| Fine at first, now deteriorating | Light damage that worsens the longer it runs | Move while it still responds |
| A dropped SSD or memory stick, now dead | No mechanism to damage; the failure is a broken joint, port or circuit board | A board-level repair job |
Nothing becomes chargeable until you have said yes to it. Each item takes a case number of its own the moment it arrives, an engineer establishes what has actually failed, and you are given a candid view of which files stand a realistic chance of returning. The single quote that follows is fixed, written down, and costs nothing.
Nothing is powered until an engineer has examined it, because the first rotation after a fall is exactly when a bent head meets the platter. Where the drive is spun at all, it is spun once and watched.
Ruined head stacks give way to matched donors, locked spindles are freed, stuck heads eased clear, and cracked boards or connectors mended.
Whatever reads without argument is copied at the outset, and once that copy is safe the engineer goes back for the sectors the fall spoiled.
Nothing is billed until you have seen the recovered file list in full and told us to go ahead. What comes back arrives on new media, with the return journey at our cost, and the case stays open at this end until you have opened every file yourself.
The figures the makers publish: a 2.5" notebook mechanism will typically take around ~300G in use and about ~650G at rest, while some 3.5" desktop models are quoted at only ~30G while spinning. Shutting a machine down before you lift it costs nothing and protects your data better than anything else you can do.
It was clicking by the first test on the bench, after going onto a hard floor while a wedding shoot was packed away. Three years of client work sat on it. A donor head stack went in, and two days of imaging left not one gallery missing, the morning's shoot among them.
Usually, provided nobody tried anything else first. Mending the mechanism is rarely worth the money; lifting the files off it nearly always is, and a donor head stack with slow, careful imaging returns most of a fallen drive.
Serious: it is the worse of the two cases. Heads in flight when the shock lands can score the platters, so a running drive takes a fraction of what a parked one shrugs off. Cut the power now.
Rarely. Nothing inside is turning, so a fall shows itself as a split circuit board, a snapped connector or a dry solder joint. Those are electrical faults, and the NAND holding your files is normally untouched.
Yes, almost always. Slight harm to a head or a bearing deepens with every spin-up, so the fall settled the outcome and each restart has only hurried it along.
Each further power-up asks more of a drive that has already begun to fail. Open the case first and let the free diagnosis tell you what is left.