HDD stops working after being hit

Question

I had the laptop on the bed and the power supply unit on a shelf about 70cm above the bed. The power supply fell on the laptop and since then the HDD wouldn't work. It makes a noise - it's not clicking - like if the head is moving up and down for a very short time and then stops. Windows does not recognize the HDD whether I connect it on the mainboard or as an external drive.

Is there any chance to fix a 2.5" HDD or should I just throw it away? Most of its contents are saved elsewhere, so I'm not losing them but I had some important data that I hadn't saved elsewhere.

Answer 1

The PC was powered on and the HD was spinning when it was hit.

Chances are that the lower disk head crashed and is now either misaligned or shattered, and the HDD can't recalibrate.

The data is very probably still recoverable but only using specialized hardware, by opening the HDD in a 'white room' and fitting the platters in the appropriate reader spindle. This kind of recovery can be quite expensive.

Answer 2

You should expect repairs to be impossible, or to be more expensive than the HDD itself — HDD is precise, high speed mechanism hard to assemble properly in less than factory conditions, and repairs of the interior require high grade dust-free room, so repairs are usually only performed if someone really needs the data and it's willing to pay a big buck for it.

Looks like you have a backup of everything important to you. Great, that's the way to go! Make sure rest of the computer is OK, and get yourself a new HDD.

Answer 3

Forget about fixing it. It will never be reliable.

Best thing is to buy a 2.5" SSD drive (which is going to be a nice speed-upgrade as well).
Do a fresh Windows install on that and then try to recover what you can from the old HDD used as external drive.
Even if by some chance you can manage to spin it up, as an external drive, copy your important data (most important first) off as soon as you can, because your luck won't last for long.