External HDD not recognized after dropped!!

[dritjon]

I have a 1TB WD external HDD, which I accidentally dropped from the table.
I reconnected it and it was working fine, but after 1-2 hours, while accessing its folders, it gave me the "Request could not be completed because of an I/O error" error.

Disconnected it, and connected again, but now its not recognized at all 🙁
The activity lights blinks, the disk spins (I can hear it), but not a sign of it on my computer.
Not in My Computer, not in Disk Management, nowhere!

I tried it in another PC, but the same.

What could it be?

 

[phil22]

I/O error

Hardware problem. The drive has failed and will have to be replaced.

 

[Bunaken]

For a dropped external hard drive the failure are likely to be on the heads or the platters, or both.

The first thing to do since you tried other computer and OS would be to open the external box and get the drive out. The problem might come from the external box and not the drive itself. 😉

Note, you will lose you WD warranty though, so unless you want to get data back out of your drive or if you are out of warranty anyway, you can perform this operation.

Plug it then directly on a SATA mother board. See if it gets recognized. If not, then the drive has a mechanical or PCB problem, but likely on the head or platters since it felt.

You can find more info on this link for diagnosis or use MHDD from HDDguru for low level diagnosis, which is a free soft.

Hope this helps

 

[dritjon]

For a dropped external hard drive the failure are likely to be on the heads or the platters, or both.

The first thing to do since you tried other computer and OS would be to open the external box and get the drive out. The problem might come from the external box and not the drive itself. 😉

Note, you will lose you WD warranty though, so unless you want to get data back out of your drive or if you are out of warranty anyway, you can perform this operation.

Plug it then directly on a SATA mother board. See if it gets recognized. If not, then the drive has a mechanical or PCB problem, but likely on the head or platters since it felt.

You can find more info on this link for diagnosis or use MHDD from HDDguru for low level diagnosis, which is a free soft.

Hope this helps

thanks for the answer
I'll try connecting it directly on a SATA and see what happens

 

[dritjon]

After 2 months of doing nothing, I tried to connect my HDD to another PC, and it worked for about 5min.
Then the drive became slow and in the end it didnt respond at all. After a restart, I lost it. The PC did not recognize it anymore.

I removed the case and connected it directly to the motherboard with SATA, still the same.
The PC takes too long to start (Im guessing it tries to recognize the HDD) and then starts, but the drive is not recognized.

I think its a PCB problem. COuld I change the PCB of a drive, without losing any data?