I think I killed my HD

[memetootoo]

I have an external hard drive in which I play WOW from. Recently I pulled one of the chords and the HD fell off my table onto my hardwood flood. I plugged it back in to see if it was working, it turned on, it started spinning. I watched one of my DVDs which I backed on to the HD to see if it was working properly, so far so good. But 10 minutes later the movie froze, and the HD no longer showed up in my computer. But it shows up in the device manager.

Is the hard drive dead? I don't have my original disc with me, and won't be able to retrieve it for another couple of months... :(

Edit I restarted my computer and it seems that it no longer can be seen through the device manager as well, I suppose its broken for good =\

[Kalos]

You have probably killed it. These devices have very fragile platters. Don't do what some people recommend to try and fix it by freezing it or warming it up ect. This will only distort the magnetic platters, they're optimised for normal room temperatures, applying cold or heat in large quantities will just ruin them, not fix them. I'm afraid, once they're dropped, it's chancy. Sometimes they work fine, sometimes they don't. More often than not, the damage is perminant.

Advice for the future, and it's not designed to mock you, but prepare you and others for data loss. Only keep one copy of something is you can imagine going on fine and uneffected without it. If data has any significance, it should never be allowed to have only one copy. I have a four layer NAS for my backup purposes, four hard drives that are nothing but copies of themselves. This allows any file on them to have five copies, the original source, and if it was dumped onto an single drive of the NAS, it is automatically duplicated across the other three, having four physical drives. Fairly redundant system, even a little over the top. But never depend on one storage medium. A hard drive can break down, and is sensitive to shock. Flash memory has a limited lifespan by design. DVDs can be scratched. I make a DVD backup once year of anything I've spend more moment's notice on, even though some of the stuff can be completely useless and unimportant. I learnt the hard way, through losing years of my own work due to a lack of a backup system when I was 12 (not that a 12 year old really has anything of significant, but I was still pretty upset at the time at losing all the save games for Warcraft 2 and other such twaddle).

Nothing is better than having redundancy in your data.

Back on topic, as that has turned into a lecture. I don't think it'll be possible to recover from the sound of it. But I can retreive the online download of the game (it's nothing illigal, one of Blizzard's own download links. They don't mind people downloading the game, as long as they have valid account keys which come with the CD box sets anyhow) So you can continue to game once you've downloaded the game files from the net.

[memetootoo]

That is good news that I can download the game off the official site. But sadly WoW is the least of my problems now. Much of my research data I've been working on for years at my internship, and years of DVD backup is on that HD. I usually keep two copies of my data, but ran out of HD space and deleted the double to make room for new data.

I'm quite upset, usually I'm very careful, but today someone the cord got wrapped around my chair and when I backed up...

Any chance the info. can be retrieved someone without paying thousands of dollars?

I think the max I'm able to pay may be $200-300.

[kall]

Probably a total long shot, but have you checked all of the Drive's cables?

It might just be a dodgy connection?

Failing that, you should be able to find someone to restore the data, perhaps even at the University's IT department.

I hope you can recover your data.. this is a sad story indeed.

[poopsmcgee]

you might be lucky and just damaged the external enclosure and the hdd might still be good. if you don't know how get someone else to do it for you. its simple and doesn't cost anything.

[memetootoo]

Thank you for the replies, your answers gives me some hope. I will bring it to the IT department at college, and see what they can do with it.

Also a friend recommended a program called spinrite http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I took a look at the website and it costs just under 100. But from what I can tell, it only recovers data from "dying" HDs not one that is already damaged? Just taking a look at my options, before I spend the money to buy something.

Thanks again guys.

[WatcherZero]

I would reccomend against the program, if your drives dmg enough that its not appearing then that program wont be able to copy data from it since its not physically working.

[memetootoo]

Ah ok, I thought so. Thank you for the reply.

Edit the HD is showing up in the device manager again, not sure if that means anything.

[kall]

Myself, I would probably try to copy off as much of the important data as I could, while the drive was visible.

I have had drives 'vanish' from Device Manager in the past, duew to lack of power, but this one has its own power source, yeah?

[memetootoo]

Yup it has its own power source. It's viable in device manager but how would I copy the data, since I still can't access the drive through "my computer."

Help would be greatly appreciated. Its a one terabyte HD with most of it full... :(

[kall]

Ohh.. if it isn't visible in My Computer things become a bit more tricky.

Is it 'disabled' in Device Manager properties?

[memetootoo]

Nope, its enabled. Should I try disabling it and re enabling it again. I'm just a bit nervous about doing anything to it, in fear of causing further damage.