Mechanical harddisk defect causing system troubles - SATA

Question

So I hope this question won't get mark as too broad, as I really want to get familiar with the deeper related issues.

Background:

A friend of mine has troubles with a broken system harddisk, after he dropped his laptop. Normally I handle such issues with well known tools like ddrescue. But in this case, I dont' even get the chance to examine the harddisk.

Harddisk: Western Digital 500GB - SATA HDD 2,5 - WD5000LPVX 22v0tt0

Problem:

As soon as I attach the harddisk to my system (even if I try to hotplug it), the whole system seems to freeze and stumble. When I attach the harddisk and perform a coldboot, the system hangs during different stages: boot prompt, login prompt, after login.

Due to vibrations I assume the hard drive platter is still spinning. In several intervalls you can here this common clicking and grinding sound. When I hotplug the harddisk I get several messages in the kern.log:

...
ata1: irq stat 0x00000040, connection status changed 
ata1: SError: { CombWake DevExch } 
ata1: hard resetting link 
ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready-0) 
ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) 275061 
ata1: hard resetting link 
ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) 
ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) 
ata1: hard resetting link 
ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready-6) 
ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) 
ata1: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbps 
ata1: hard resetting link 
ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 
ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd Oxec) 
ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err mask 0x5) 
ata1: hard resetting link 
ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) 
ata1: hard resetting link 
ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) 
ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) 
ata1: hard resetting link  
ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0) 
ata1: COMRESET failed (errno=-16) 
ata1: hard resetting link 
ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310) 
ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd Oxec) 
ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err mask=0x5) 
ata1: hard resetting link 
ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)  
ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 310)  
ata1.00: link offline, clearing class 1 to NONE ] 
ata1: EH complete

Question:

So for me it is crystal-clear a mechanical failure, but:

• Is there something I can do, without owning special harddisk recovery hardware tools?
• What kind of hardware failure can cause such troubles?
• What kind of SATA commands can cause a system to hang during the boot process in such a way?

---

EDIT:

Additionally I should mention that the laptop was running for several minutes after it fell to the ground. Then the laptop was powered off regular without any errors or misbehavior.

Answer 1

IN most of the cases in it a problem either with magnet heads (assembly). Heads mounted on Head Stack Assembly or HSA. When the computer starts up during the POST procedure HDD is initialized (firmware, size, parameters, mode, interface) and reported to BIOS. During this phase HSA goes off the landing zone (where is it parked) and the heads are reading special sectors (so called adaptives) where service information about the drive and other sectors is located. If it fails to read this data HDD hangs and retries causing all the system to hang.

This can be caused by bad sectors also but in this case HDD would only be slow when these sectors are read not always.

HSA can be replaced but only in a special clean room in a service center.

HDD inside

HSA replacement