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February 21st, 2004 14:00

Damaged USB hard drive after accidentally been kicked not detected by Windows XP

Hi everyone. If someone could help out I'd be really grateful. I accidentally kicked an external USB 120GB HD over, and the power supply came out the back. When I tried to reconnect the drive, it makes a series of clicks about once every second, and isn't detected by windows XP home edition. The  add hardware wizard doesn't help, and searching Dell and Microsoft doesn't help either. If anyone can suggest any way of making the drive better I'd be really grateful: firstly cos I don't want to buy another one, and secondly, it has some important data on it that it would take me a while to recover from various sources.

 

Thanks in advance

14.4K Posts

February 21st, 2004 17:00

sounds like you've damaged the heads.
can only suggest you try it on another pc but my gut feeling is that it's gone belly up.

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February 21st, 2004 22:00

Is there no way of replacing the heads?

2.6K Posts

February 22nd, 2004 01:00

Nope, they are an integral part of the drive.

220 Posts

February 25th, 2004 04:00

Sure, you can replace the heads. You do have a sub-micron clean room and an electron microscope, right? Of course, everyone has a 5-micron soldering machine...

Usually a physical drop followed by the Click of Death(tm) means the heads have hit the media platters and BOTH are damaged. It is possible but very unlikely that the drive controller is damaged. In the case of a media strike your only alternative for recovery would be a data recovery service, which typically costs $500+++.

If the drive is under warranty it will probably be replaced.
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