[SOLVED] Western Digital WD50EZRZ 5TB fell to the floor, and...

[heartagramm]

As one might expect, the worst result. Jamming noise, and therefore I opened the flap. I managed to get the heads moving by carefully spinning the platters, and installed the cover back on. Tightened the screws to similar torque, and plugged it in. The HDD spun and immediately Windows recognized the drive. Except it didn't. It shows up in the device manager and it briefly showed in the native Windows disk management utility. The problem is that the drive was also encrypted, so I couldn't just plug it in and try to grab everything I could back off it. I could get it recognized in Veracrypt which was used to encrypt it, and it took the password too and gave access to the drive. It didn't show up in My Computer though. The drive spun quite nicely and after a while it kept spinning and gave two "errr" sounds, so maybe the head is gone? If not from the impact, at least from the taking apart thingy I did. So. Is the drive history or could I try to get another similar drive and exchange the head unit? Any advice? Am I tied to exactly identical model from the same time period that mine was made or could I use a 4 TB version header instead? I've tried searching but the info is quite limited...

At least the lesson was learnt (hopefully); I will tie down my HDD's tighly to the ground when I use them from now on...

 

[faalin]

If you opened the drive up outside a clean room that drive is done for, the platters are contaminated with dust and even if you were able to swap head it cause so many issues with the dust it would ether start to scratch the platters or wouldnt be able to read blocks because of the dust.


Buy a new drive and restore from backups..... if you have them.

 

[DSzymborski]

As one might expect, the worst result. Jamming noise, and therefore I opened the flap. I managed to get the heads moving by carefully spinning the platters, and installed the cover back on. Tightened the screws to similar torque, and plugged it in. The HDD spun and immediately Windows recognized the drive. Except it didn't. It shows up in the device manager and it briefly showed in the native Windows disk management utility. The problem is that the drive was also encrypted, so I couldn't just plug it in and try to grab everything I could back off it. I could get it recognized in Veracrypt which was used to encrypt it, and it took the password too and gave access to the drive. It didn't show up in My Computer though. The drive spun quite nicely and after a while it kept spinning and gave two "errr" sounds, so maybe the head is gone? If not from the impact, at least from the taking apart thingy I did. So. Is the drive history or could I try to get another similar drive and exchange the head unit? Any advice? Am I tied to exactly identical model from the same time period that mine was made or could I use a 4 TB version header instead? I've tried searching but the info is quite limited...

At least the lesson was learnt (hopefully); I will tie down my HDD's tighly to the ground when I use them from now on...

The next step depends on how much you're willing to spend. An encrypted hard drive is already more difficult to recover, and by opening up and tinkering with the inside, without any expertise or a clean room, you've greatly reduced the chances further that anyone can recover your data. At this point, the options are a data recovery lab -- and not a bargain one, so prepare to spend a lot of money -- or sending the hard drive off to a recycling center.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

kiss it goodbye. very little change at recovery at HUGE cost.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

By opening the drive outside a clean room environment, and without proper tools and knowledge, you put the final nail in that drive's coffin. Toss the drive, replace, and restore from backup. Or, you could spend up to several thousand $$$ in an attempt to recover data (not likely from an encrypted drive).