Hard Drive Not Detected After Fall
A client brought in a non-working WD20NMVW-11AV3S0 external hard drive that had fallen off a table and was no longer recognized by the computer. The data on the drive was very important to the client.
Data Recovery
Diagnostics revealed the motor wasn’t spinning the platters, and the heads were stuck. The parking ramp had shifted due to the fall, so the ramp was removed, and the heads were freed. After reassembling, the drive spun but failed again due to damage to the ramp. A donor drive was used to replace the ramp and heads.
Result
The drive was recognized, and most of the data was recovered, except for 1.5 GB of unreadable files. The recovery took under six hours, and the client’s essential data was saved.