Dropped External Hard Drive

godtabh

Being a clumsy idiot I am just after dropping my external hard drive which I used as a back up.

Thing is I just sold my PC so now I have nothing! Bollix!

Any good places to try and get it back? I don't think my chances are good

bonzodog2

You could be lucky, you may just have broken the enclosure.

More details wouldn't hurt:
Does it have its own power supply?
How far did it fall?
Make/model/capacity?
Have you attempted and failed to access it ?

Or you may be unlucky and end up paying hundreds to some specialist. How valuable is your data?

godtabh

bonzodog2 wrote: »

You could be lucky, you may just have broken the enclosure.

More details wouldn't hurt:
Does it have its own power supply?
How far did it fall?
Make/model/capacity?
Have you attempted and failed to access it ?

Or you may be unlucky and end up paying hundreds to some specialist. How valuable is your data?

It's an Iomega external hard drive with 1tb capacity. External clouser
It fell about 1.5 ft

When it is hooked up to the wife's laptop the HD spins and thn clicks and turns itself off. The laptop does not recognise it at all.

There is lots of stuff on it but only really interested in the photos.

bonzodog2

A friend of mine knocked a 500GB 3.5" SATA drive off a chair to the floor, so a comparable distance. I bought a USB/SATA cable and its working still 3 years later.
Is it still in warranty? (if not, no need to worry about voiding it by opening case)
Was it running when it was dropped? (worse chances if so)

I'd say its worth a try to do one of:
get a new enclosure/USB-SATA cable
find a friend with a tower with a spare SATA slot

godtabh

It was om when I dropped it

bonzodog2

One of these is less than 12 GBP, worth a try. Then you're into the territory of trying a circuit board from an identical drive, then the expensive specialists.

coylemj

godtabh wrote: »

It was om when I dropped it

That doesn't sound good. When a drive is switched off, the read/write heads are pulled away from the magnetic disks, precisely to reduce the risk of damage if the drive is dropped or suffers a severe knock. A drive can withstand a far greater shock ('g' force) without sustaining damage when it's switched off than when the disks are spinning.

If the drive was switched on when it was dropped, there is a high risk that the shock caused the r/w heads to touch the (spinning) disks in which case the drive is probably destroyed because if one of the heads scratches the surface, it will release a cloud of dust, particles will then get under all of the other heads as a result of which the surface will be scarred and the heads wrecked.

Nothingbetter2d

godtabh wrote: »

Being a clumsy idiot I am just after dropping my external hard drive which I used as a back up.

Thing is I just sold my PC so now I have nothing! Bollix!

Any good places to try and get it back? I don't think my chances are good

there is a place in phibsborough that specialise in hard drive data recovery... its next to tescos

here is their website http://www.datarecovery.ie/contact_us.htm

WARNING data recovery from broken hard drives is a slow & expensive process.

godtabh

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

there is a place in phibsborough that specialise in hard drive data recovery... its next to tescos

here is their website http://www.datarecovery.ie/contact_us.htm

WARNING data recovery from broken hard drives is a slow & expensive process.

I was in touch with them this morning. It is a €45 assessment fee but they wouldn't give me an idea of recovery costs (if anything was possible to recover).

The question I have to ask is is what ever on the hard driver worth the expense and to be honest it probably isn't.

Nothingbetter2d

before you toss it out... open up the enclosure and remove the hard drive.... then put it into a pc as a slave drive (if the interface is IDE) or plug it into any of the spare sata sockets (if the interface is SATA)

fire up windows and hope to god it still works

godtabh

I dont have access to a pc at the moment to do that.

Also the fact that their is a clicking sound I wouldnt want to spin it up again.

Nothingbetter2d

ive still managed to pull data off clicking drives.... the drive must be in slave mode for it to work if IDE drive. Must not be your c: drive in a sata drive.

if you have a family member with a pc ask them can u put your drive in to recover the data and copy it onto a new external Hard drive.