Well, that was silly

You can buy a SSD and start again.

Thanks for the thought and the good advice. One thing I will try is to remove the drive from its enclosure and connect it directly to a PC. I suppose it's just possible that the case took the brunt of the fall and the drive itself is undamaged. Just possible...

sadly my gut feeling is the drive is off its bearings. But worth a try certainly

I just tried. Nothing. Is there any point in my opening the drive and taking a look? Assuming it is broken, I doubt I could fix it, though.

You may have dislodged a connector. If it's in a caddy then there could be a small interface PCB with the red power light that the real hard plugs into.

Thanks for the thought but I just removed the drive from the caddy and connected it directly: still no joy, I'm afraid.

I think you've been very unlucky, especially if nothing looks broken on the outside.

I just looked at a YouTube video on how to open a hard drive. The chap explained that he was using one that he knew to be damaged: "This is a good test," he said, and gently shook it.

This produced the sound of several small bits rattling around inside.

I did the same. No rattling. Perhaps there is still hope.

There are a few connectors from the PCB to it's innards. I have taken end of life hard disks apart.

I have a disassembled one next to me and you can't get to any rotating shaft or part without taking it apart. It's designed to be sealed from the environment. On this one, if I take the PCB off there's a window that's taped up with some foil. If I remove this tape I could get to the outside platter and check the assembly still rotates.

Have a good look at the PCB with a magnifying glass to see if you can see any cracks around the connectors.

I have heard of companies swapping PCBs on Hard Disks to get the data off from a failed HD.

Absolutely, there is still hope.

The first question, is was the power shut off and it had stopped spinning ? The heads will be parked up the ramp if that is the case. The drive is much more resistant to shock, if the heads are parked.

The parked shock rating, can be around 300G.

And the way this worked -- it's a matter of "how hard is the thing the drive body hit".

Back in uni, if the professor dropped a steel ball onto a steel plate, he would use some equipment to measure the rate of deceleration. And it would be anywhere from 1000G to 10000G. Probably closer to the 1000G number.

If you drop a hard drive onto a steel plate then, that is an inelastic collision, and a high G number will be the result.

If the drive is in a housing, like a plastic housing, the deceleration is a bit more gentle. Now, we may be under the

Pull the drive and do a visual examination.

if the cabling was "yanked" out of the drive, look for connector damage. Dislodged contacts, cracked plastic and so on. You may need to solder a new connector onto the drive PCB.

The drives are reasonably robust, but it could have fallen exactly the wrong way.

The motor is an FDB motor. FDB motors come in "fixed on one end" or "fixed on two ends" type. When the spindle is at speed, the spindle pumps oil along the shaft and "floats on a layer of lubricant". But if you somehow managed to force the spindle into the restraint somehow, maybe it is seized and the motor cannot start.

Place your ear on the drive, when the drive receives power. Listen for "dee-ill-deet" noise. This is the modulation pattern for a stuck spindle. It means the PCB has power, the motor drive IC is working, and the contact plate between controller PCB and the drive bits, is making contact.

If the motor makes no sound at all, check the SATA connectors and look for cracked PCB that has disconnected power. Even if the spindle is jammed, the coils and magnets can still make the "starting sound".

The drive controller board, has bootstrap code in the ROM, but not the entire operating code. The bootstrap code loads the heads on the spinning platter, and reads the real firmware off the platter. Then, the real firmware starts execution, and the drive provides its ID string, only when the firmware (which contains the ID string) is running.

If the controller board needs to be replaced, at least one ROM chip (eight pin?), needs to be unsoldered from the broken controller board and soldered onto the new controller board. This ROM is "mated" to the platter content. Older designs, did not need a ROM swap, but modern drives do need this.

Paul

If you search for <HDD data recovery> you will find a number of organisations who can help if the HDD is dead ... but you might not like the bill.

I shall, thanks.

There was no power (or data) connection to the plastic caddy when it fell.

Ah. The fall was from approximately 18" so that's maybe a plus, but it was onto a laminated wood floor, so that definitely isn't.

There's complete silence, sadly.

I'll do that next. Thanks, Paul

Back in the mid 80s the Open University managed to have a fire and a lot of disks got damaged.

There was an article in Computing about one outfit that recovered data in such situations and it followed them as they opened a drive to dislodge jammed heads. I'll never forget the tech saying the moment the case was opened, they had about 60 seconds before air contamination ruined the platters.

That was the 1980s when drive sizes were generally very small (10,20) multiples of megabytes.

Not of its a new unit. Too damn small for human fingers

You might try a warranty claim

Yes. I have had success with broken electronics, but never with a crashed head.

If all the external electronics are first removed and the outside of the case cleaned opening up a case in a clean room that has the same standard of filtered air as when they were assembled wouldn't ruin the platter. I would guess that if a head was parked on the platter then physically moving it by external force may destroy some of the information.

I think the drives were and are oxygen free - either under vacuum or nitrogen filled. But I may be wrong. In any case its a matter of 'no user serviceable parts inside' - take it to a specialist or leave it alone.