The fault · drops and impacts
Switched off, a hard disk takes more of a fall than most people expect. The heads are parked clear of the platters and the frame absorbs the landing. Switched on, there is no margin at all: at 5,400 or 7,200rpm the head is flying nanometres over the surface with nowhere to move to. Which state it was in shapes nearly everything after. So the one thing to avoid, wherever in Hull it fell, is plugging it in to see. The first spin-up after a fall is frequently the last good read left in the disk, and a test throws it away.
An engineer will take the details
0800 6890668
| The symptoms | What the fault is | What to try |
|---|---|---|
| It has clicked since the fall | The impact knocked the heads off alignment and it keeps retrying | Leave the power off |
| Beeping after a knock | Nothing will turn the spindle — heads lying flat on the platter, or a seized bearing | Shaking will not help |
| The computer no longer sees it | Heads on the platter, a dead spindle motor, or damage to the board or the port | Have it examined, not retried |
| Worked at first, worse since | Minor damage that gets worse with every hour of use | Act while it still answers |
| A flash drive or SSD that died in the fall | Nothing moves inside — suspect the board, a joint or a connector | Repair at board level |
Each item that arrives gets a case number the day it lands. An engineer looks at it and finds the real fault, and that costs you nothing. You are told in plain terms which files can come off the drive and which cannot. A price follows — one figure, written down. No work starts until you have seen it and agreed to it.
Nothing is switched on until an engineer has been over the drive by hand. After a fall, a bent head reaches the platter on the very first turn. If it does get spun, it gets spun once, and somebody watches it.
A matched donor head stack replaces the ruined one. Seized spindles are freed, heads left on the platter are lifted off, boards and sockets repaired.
Anything that reads cleanly is taken off and put somewhere safe before anything else. The sectors the impact ruined are worked on afterwards.
You are not billed while you are still thinking. The list of what came off the drive goes to you first, and the invoice waits on your word. Files go home on media bought in for the job, with the postage back on us. We keep the job open until you have opened them on your own machine.
What the datasheets say: a 2.5" notebook mechanism is usually rated at about ~300G while running and around ~650G when parked, while some 3.5" desktop drives are quoted as low as ~30G with the platters turning. Shutting a machine down before you shift it costs nothing, and nothing else on this page helps as much.
It hit concrete while a wedding was being packed away, and on the bench it clicked straight away. Three years of paid work sat on it. Donor heads went in, imaging took two days, and every gallery was returned — including the one shot that morning.
Usually, provided nobody has already had a go at it. We are not trying to save the mechanism for further use; it only has to hold together for one slow, careful read. Fit a matched donor head stack, image it gently, and most of the disk normally comes off.
It matters more than anything else here. The same fall with the power off is a far smaller problem. A head flying nanometres over a spinning platter has nowhere to go, and it can gouge the coating. Leave the power off.
Rarely. Nothing inside is moving, so the damage lands on the board — a connector torn off, a solder joint cracked open. That is bench electronics and it mends. The flash chips holding your files normally come through it fine.
Almost certainly. A head or a bearing shifted a fraction out of true gets slightly worse on every spin-up. The fall decided the ending; each start since has only brought it nearer.
Leave it switched off. A failing drive has a limited number of starts in it, and each one spends a little more. The free diagnosis will say which files can be read.