Dropped my external hard drive

[MinJa21]

Hi everyone! As the title says, i accidentally dropped my external hard drive. It was only about a foot drop but it must have been hit hard enough to damage something, not to mention it was connected to my desktop and that i was in the middle of moving some files around. My desktop froze for a few minutes before responding but it was now laggy so i restarted it with the drive still connected. When it booted up, it automatically ran ChkDsk. It took less than an hour thankfully.

I checked to see what files were affected and maybe even continue copying/saving stuff when i realized that it was the drive that made it extremely laggy before restarting. I looked around to see how to fix this and one site suggested defragging. a lot of them were now fragmented (i was using Defraggler) but it could barely finish defragging from the lag. I thought i'd copy those files before formatting to a laptop with a lot of free memory but still, LAG.

Any suggestions on how at least try to get it to be faster? At least a program that can help with moving huge file sizes other than TeraCopy? I have Windows xp (but i can switch to my laptop which is windows 7) and an Iomega external hard drive.

 

[Samat]

There could be physical damage to the read/write heads or the platters, you should avoid any operations on the drive that save data. Backup anything important from it asap. The lag is propably caused by the error correction done on the drive when it is being accessed and if so there's not much you can do to speed it up. Trying to defrag would propably be a really bad idea.

 

[USAFRet]

You have very likely damaged the heads and/or platters.

First - copy any files off of it that you can.
If it seems to be taking a long time...that is a good indication of major damage.

Do not defrag. Trying to defrag it will probably make things worse. The only thing that matters right now is the data. Copy as much as you can.

There is no special software that will make it read any faster.

 

[MinJa21]

You have very likely damaged the heads and/or platters.

First - copy any files off of it that you can.
If it seems to be taking a long time...that is a good indication of major damage.

Do not defrag. Trying to defrag it will probably make things worse. The only thing that matters right now is the data. Copy as much as you can.

There is no special software that will make it read any faster.

Once i actually finish copying files from it, will formatting it save the drive? When you said it damaged the platters, is that an external/physical part?
Edit: googled it.. Guess it's the physical part of the drive. Can this still be fixed by formatting or in any other way?

 

[USAFRet]

You have very likely damaged the heads and/or platters.

First - copy any files off of it that you can.
If it seems to be taking a long time...that is a good indication of major damage.

Do not defrag. Trying to defrag it will probably make things worse. The only thing that matters right now is the data. Copy as much as you can.

There is no special software that will make it read any faster.

Once i actually finish copying files from it, will formatting it save the drive? When you said it damaged the platters, is that an external/physical part?
Edit: googled it.. Guess it's the physical part of the drive. Can this still be fixed by formatting or in any other way?

If it is actual physical damage (probable), there is no fixing it.
It is toast.

Get whatever data you can off of it, and consider that drive to be dead. You might play with is a bit, but don't put a single source file on it that you don't want to lose.

 

[MinJa21]

If it is actual physical damage (probable), there is no fixing it.
It is toast.

Get whatever data you can off of it, and consider that drive to be dead. You might play with is a bit, but don't put a single source file on it that you don't want to lose.

I'll look around to see what i can do myself, since our neighbor who is more experienced with fixing computer related stuff isn't around yet. Once he's back, maybe he can do something about it. Thanks for your help 😀