Octopus Overlords

I have a friend who was using an external Hard Drive when her kid knocked it off the bed onto the floor. They've tried taking it out of the case (HDD is a Seagate Barracuda P/N: 9BJ136-566) and putting it in an external HDD cradle, and it failed to detect the drive.

Recovery specialists are hundreds of dollars.

Is there anything I could try or any diagnostics that might be able to detect the disk?

Does the drive even spin?

Maybe SpinRite?

If you cannot even get the drive detected then you're most likely contending with some degree of internal damage. In which case there's unfortunately very little you can do to help. The data is likely still recoverable though, depending on the extent of damage. But she'll need to deal with a professional data recovery service.

Don't power it up anymore, and have her store it someplace safe. Then help her contact a reliable recovery service for a free estimate.

Bakhtosh wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 6:39 pm They've tried taking it out of the case (HDD is a Seagate Barracuda P/N: 9BJ136-566) and putting it in an external HDD cradle, and it failed to detect the drive.

What do you mean by "cradle"? Is it an enclosure?

Get one of those universal SATA/IDE cable/adapter things and try that. If that fails, you may have to go professional. Keep in mind that it may be the control board that is damaged instead of the HDD internals.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2019 10:00 am

Bakhtosh wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 6:39 pm They've tried taking it out of the case (HDD is a Seagate Barracuda P/N: 9BJ136-566) and putting it in an external HDD cradle, and it failed to detect the drive.

Get one of those universal SATA/IDE cable/adapter things and try that.

I picked up this one recently which works great, btw.

Generally speaking, HDD is done if it fell off the table. Some drives have "emergency auto-park" if it detects "free-fall", but I doubt regular consumer drives still have that nowadays.

MonkeyFinger wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2019 5:53 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2019 10:00 am

Bakhtosh wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 6:39 pm They've tried taking it out of the case (HDD is a Seagate Barracuda P/N: 9BJ136-566) and putting it in an external HDD cradle, and it failed to detect the drive.

Get one of those universal SATA/IDE cable/adapter things and try that.

I picked up this one recently which works great, btw.

or if you want to really save money: https://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-2-0-To-SAT ... SwELtdecNL