Fault type · a fall or an impact
One detail decides whether a bump is nothing or fatal: was the disk turning at the time. Parked and powered down, a drive takes a remarkable beating; up to speed, the heads sit nanometres clear of your files with no room to move. Whichever it was, you get a single attempt at this — don't spend it checking whether it still works.
Speak to an engineer about it
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| On screen | What that tells you | First step |
|---|---|---|
| It clicks since the fall | The blow has bent or knocked the heads out of line — the retry cycle is running | Switch off, leave it off |
| It beeps since the fall | Heads bonded to the surface, or a bearing gone solid — you can hear the motor stall | Never shake it loose |
| Invisible since the impact | A head crash, a wrecked motor, or a split board or connector | Diagnosis first, power later |
| Worked after the drop, failing now | Borderline damage getting worse each time it runs — the gradual kind | Act while it still reads |
| SSD or USB stick dead after a fall | Nothing inside to crash — what broke is the board, a connector or a solder joint | This is board-level repair |
As soon as it lands with us, your device gets its own case number. An engineer works out the fault, says what can genuinely be pulled off, then puts one fixed price in writing — no charge for diagnosis, no obligation, and no chargeable work until you approve it.
Anything that has fallen is examined before a volt reaches it: the first rotation after a knock is when injured heads find the platters. It's powered once, controlled and watched.
Broken heads give way to matched donor assemblies, jammed spindles are released, bonded heads eased off the platter, split boards and connectors repaired.
Imaging leaves the injured areas until the end, so the sound bulk of your data is safe before anyone starts coaxing the difficult sectors.
You sign off a complete list of the recovered files first; only then does the recovery fee fall due. Everything returns on fresh media, postage paid, and the job stays open until you confirm the files open at your end.
One specification worth acting on: a laptop-class hard drive is usually quoted at roughly ~300G while running against ~650G at rest, and certain 3.5" desktop models sit as low as ~30G in operation. So before a computer gets carried anywhere, the cheapest protection your data will ever have is a proper shutdown.
Three years of client shoots lived on one portable drive, which was dropped during a wedding load-out and had begun clicking by the time anyone tested it. A donor head stack and two days of imaging brought every gallery back — the morning's included.
Repairing the drive is rarely worthwhile; rescuing what's on it usually is. Swapping the heads and imaging patiently recovers most drives after a fall, so long as nobody keeps switching them on.
That is the bad version: a running drive withstands far less shock than a parked one, and heads in flight can hit the platters. Shut it down now and treat it as urgent.
Normally yes. Solid state has no moving parts to crash, so drop damage shows up as cracked boards, broken connectors or failed solder joints — electronic repairs, with the NAND untouched.
Very likely. Slight damage to heads or bearings only worsens as the drive runs — the fall set the ending; using it merely turns the pages.
Powering a damaged device up again costs you data. Start a case first; diagnosis is free whatever you decide.