Case notes · Electrical damage · SDR-2025-0618
It Fell Mid-Copy and Tore the USB Free.
The unit fell off the desk and yanked the cable out
, and it did so while it was copying a folder over
. Plugged back in, it isn't picked up at all
and now grinds for a second, then stops
. He guessed the timing was the whole problem. He was right.
Seeing the same thing yourself?
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The translation.
Switch a drive off and its heads retreat clear of the platters altogether, which is why a fall in a rucksack is survived far more often than anyone expects. Mid-copy is the opposite state: heads riding nanometres above the data, actuator swinging. An identical knock delivered then arrives precisely where it can do the most damage, and the drive's built-in shock sensing gets no time to react.
Kit used on this job.
What happens in a case →| Platform | Its role in this case | Why we use it |
|---|---|---|
| DeepSpar Disk Imager 4 | Map the heads first, then image in order of head health | Head-map-driven imaging, with per-head timeouts, resets and power-cycle control |
| PC-3000 Data Extractor | Ran the read passes, recovering by power cycle whenever it stalled | The PC-3000 platform's imaging unit, commanded by its firmware unit |
| R-Studio Technician | Reassembled the filesystem from the image, including the half-copied folder | Wide filesystem support, with RAID rebuilds you can trust |
In the lab.
Study the damage pattern before anything is disturbed
Under inspection the sliders showed the lopsided damage a knock produces when the heads are flying: not even wear across the stack, but heavy injury to two of them. A narrow band of light contact marking crossed the platters, the mark of an actuator shoved onto the surface — not, thankfully, the deep circular gouging that ends a job.
Donor heads, then a map, then sequenced reads
A matched donor stack was fitted, then a head map drawn. What it showed of the surviving surface set the order for everything after: sound heads read first and fast, the injured band left till last at low transfer rates with managed resets between hangs.
Handle the impact zone as the delicate area it now is
Whatever lay beneath the head as the drive hit the floor — the damage geography names it — was left until the end and read softly. Patience got most of it back. Nothing was ever test-mounted; the platters were asked once, carefully, and no more.
The result.
Close to everything came back; the loss stopped at a few interview clips inside the contact band. The folder in transit when it fell was copied off the image again, gravity taking no part this time.
Similar cases on the index.
Others in Electrical damage.
Does this sound like your own drive?
The rule holds as in every case above: switch it off, and let a free diagnosis come before any decision.