When a hard drive is dropped, it is very rare that it does not sustain some sort of physical damage which eventually result in a fatal head crash. The chances of recovering the data strictly depends on the steps that follow, along with a little lucky for timing.
In this case, we have a hard drive that was dropped and is clicking. We diagnosed that the heads were crashing and needed to be replaced. After replacing the heads, we were able to get the drive to detect and read. Using our hardware imager, we were able to focus our drive imaging process on the sectors which contain data, avoiding areas with a lot of damage for the first pass and gradually worked a little harder on the damaged areas. Unfortunately, the drive breathed its last before we could get a 100% read of the data. However, we were very fortunate to get 93% of the data recovered from this client’s dropped hard drive.
This client is fortunate in that she not only took it to a local computer shop who was quickly able to determine that her drive needed more than a data recovery program and she was referred to Recovery Force. Had she or her technician attempted software recoveries and kept the drive powered on too long, the outcome would have been a lot different, probably with her not getting any data recovered.
If you, or anyone you know, have a hard that was dropped and/or making clicking noises, it is best to power the drive off and get it to a professional data recovery lab like Recovery Force before further damage is caused. The sooner we get the drive, the better the chances of successfully recovering your data.