recover data from fallen harddrive

[harshil09]

my WD 2 TB HDD fell from the counter of my bar to the floor, i got scared and tried it out and it worked, but then after some hours it started to crash and did not respond, i really want to recover my data, any idea what might be wrong and how do i fix it??

 

[The Paladin]

well you can try to use it as a usb drive/secondary in a tower, and start computer on another primary drive and then see if you can access it, if not, its too late.
short of sending it to a forensic firm (which will tear the platens off and reassemble them into another drive and charge you 200$/hour for the work)

 

[DR_Luke]

It is too bad that you didn't think to backup what you could in the small window of opportunity you had. A dropped drive = physical damage. To recover the data, you will need to deal with the physical damage first.

If your data is of value, send the drive to a reputable data recovery lab who has the clean room and equipment needed to recover your data. But, be prepared that it might be unrecoverable now. If the heads started to crash and the drive has been powered on for any amount of time, they will scrape the surface off your platter to the point where there is no data to be recovered.

As the drive is clearly spinning, there is absolutely no reason why any reputable lab who knows what they are doing would ever take the platters out of your drive. They would inspect the heads and platter surfaces in the clean room to try to determine if it is still possible to recover the data with the original heads, with donor heads or it is just a lost cause.

Depending on where you are in the world, here is my growing list of reputable and affordable data recovery labs:

Recovery Force
Data Medics
Data Savers
PC Image
Data Busters
Mind Merge
Chandigarh Data Recovery

If you are lucky, the professional lab will be able to keep the original heads alive, fix some damage firmware on the platter surface and get your drive alive enough to recover your data at the lower end of the pricing scale.

If your data isn't even worth the lower end rates of around $300 USD charged by data recovery professionals, I'm afraid that there isn't much you will be able to do with the drive in its current condition.