7 Do’s and Don’ts When Dealing with Dropped Hard Drive

Have you ever accidentally drop your hard drive? At worst, the dropped hard drive will damage. In the meantime, the data stored in this drive will be lost. Thus, in this article, we’ll guide you how to cope with this terrible case.

Unquestionably, if an electronic gets dropped heavily, it will tend to die. The same holds true for external hard drives. Drops can render head crash in the hard drive. It means that the drive heads will get close to the drive platters and lastly drive will be unable to work any longer. When a hard drive fails, its internal data will be at risk as well. Hence, it’s always suggested that users should take good care of their hard drive. But if you still drop your hard drive by accident, what should do? Here are a list of 7 do’s and don’ts in this scenario, You had better adhere to them strictly.

1. Check Whether the Hard Drive Can Work

When you drop a hard drive, you must hope to identify if the drive can still work. It’s indeed necessary for you to make clear about this. If your hard drive is kept in an enclosure, there are great chances that it’s the enclosure that corrupts, instead of the drive itself. So you can connect the drive to your computer to test it.

2. Resort to the Hard Drive Manufacturer

If the drive can’t work anymore, it is a good idea to resort to the manufacturer. All the drive should come with warranty. As long as your drive is still in the warranty period, the manufacturer should be responsible for it. You’ll definitely gain some helpful advices from them. Also, if you don’t attach much importance to the data on the drive, you can request the manufacturer to send you a replacement.

3. Do Nothing If You Hear Clicking Noises

When you test it but hear some grinding sounds, like clicking, you should stop all operations at once. Such clicking noises commonly come from improper contact between head and platter, which will scratch the drive platter where your data is actually stored. Once the platter is scratched, your data must be lost. Therefore, do nothing if you hear the strange noises from the drive.

4. Confirm If You Have Any Useful Data Backups

So as to avoid data loss, it is highly advisable to make a regular data backup. For instance, if you have backed up your PST files, even though the original files get compromised, you can get back your corrupted PST data easily from the backups. Hence, when your hard drive is surely corrupt due to heavy drops and you want to recover your data, check if any useful and current data backups are available.

5. Don’t Attempt Hard Drive Recovery via Software

Provided that you don’t have any effective and up-to-date data backups, you must be going to repair your hard drive. When searching online for suggestions, you’ll find many related software which is boasting that they can repair dropped drive. Don’t trust in any of them. Dropped hard drive is suffering physical damage. But the software can only fix logical issues instead of this kind of damages.

6. Don’t Fix the Dropped Hard Drive on Your Own

Now that the drive is damaged physically, many users may intend to open and fix it by themselves. In reality, this measure is not wise, either. Any dirt and debris in the unclean room can destroy the opened drive like a breeze. Also, the improper moisture in the current space can make great impact on the drive. In a nutshell, opening a drive has many demanding requests, such as special tools, a cleanroom and so on.

7. Take Recourse to Professionals in Hard Drive Recovery

Based on the Tip 5 and 6, you cannot repair the dropped hard drive on your own. In this situation, your last resort is to seek assistance from professionals in this respect. They can provide you proper processing methods. Of course, if you can afford it, you can deliver the dropped drive to them and pay them for expert hard drive repair.

Author Introduction:

Shirley Zhang is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including mdf repair software and outlook repair software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com