Physical damages to a dropped hard drive in need of a recovery
When an external drive has been dropped, the chances are that it no longer works properly and is making sounds and noises like clicking or beeping, scratching or spinning without the possibility to access the data. In other cases, it returns a not recognised error on the system. The three main parts of the drive, the heads, the arm and the platters, could have been damaged in the fall.
The read/write head or RW head is a device found on the arm of a hard drive that is used to read and write data from the hard drive’s disk platter. Hard drives usually have one read/write head for each platter. The most common cause of drive failure is a head crash, where its internal read-and-write head touches a platter, instead of just hovering above the surface, or scratches the magnetic data-storage surface. This failure, on top of platter damage, will make a drive useless.
Obviously, trying to see if it works in itself is wrong as more damages could be created on the drive, making even more difficult to retrieve the data. This is the reason why it is important to get it checked by a professional who knows about the internal mechanical parts of a drive and can make a proper assessment of the state of the drive as quickly as possible.
Using PC-3000 data recovery to repair the modules of a dropped WD Blue hard drive
Nevertheless, contrary to general knowledge, there are some cases when the data can be recovered from a dropped drive by using the right data recovery tools without opening it in a clean room.
The team at Data Retrieval was given a Western Digital Blue 3 TB hard drive that had been dropped by a client a couple of days ago. They were able to repair the modules of the drive, using PC-3000, which gave them a good success rate of recovery. PC-3000, which was designed specifically for the needs of data recovery businesses like Data Retrieval, is a data recovery tool that does not require clean rooms, servo writers, or other expensive equipment. Its universal utilities give fast drive diagnostics, and let the technician decide on possible methods for recovery.
Fixing a dropped drive has to be dealt with on a case by case basis. The method used to recover the data will depend on the severity the impact and the internal damages sustained.