Can I fix a hard drive that fell on the floor and started making a nasty grinding noise?

Question

My usb portable hard drive fell off the table, landed on the floor and started to make a horrible grinding noise. I assume the platters fell off the spindle? (I think i'm making these terms up)

If i open it up (seagate barracuda) would i be able to salvage anything?

Thanks

Answer 1

Whatever your issue is, it sounds like a mechanical one. Those sounds are coming from the drive itself, not the enclosure its in.

You, my friend, are out of luck. Just to be sure, take the drive out of the enclosure and plug it into a PC. If loud noises persist and you are unable to access it, then expensive data recovery services are your only hope (in many cases this route is VERY expensive)

Answer 2

No!
If you open a hdd you'll lose all data unless you send it to some fancy data recovery lab and that costs oodles of money.

Your best bet is to backup your data as quickly as possible.

The only thing you might be able to salvage is the external chassis the hdd is in. But even that will probably require some soldering.

Answer 3

take the drive out of the container and see if you can get to the data if you plug it directly into the computer (ide or sata)

if you can you should run a program called spinrite on it and that will hopefully recover any damage.

if you can't see the drive then it might be pretty screwed some hdd have glass platers on the inside that can bust into a million pieces.