Hard drive dropped

[Iggle Piggle]

Hi, I dropped my laptop and now the hard drive is not recognised as being 'there'.
I pulled it out and put it on a IDE to USB adapter and the host PC can see it but cannot access it.
I'm guessing the heads have been bent/knocked away from the media ??
what does anyone think?
(apart from I'm a plonka for dropping it)
cheers

[ChuckFickens]

if you can see it's there what happens if you try running a scandisk on it? (right click on the drive in my computer select properties, click on the tools tab, and then it's something like check now.)

but I'm not optimistic to be honest!

[trevHCS]

I don't suppose it's one of those nice modern Dell or IBM ones that braces for impact when it realises it's falling?

Even if not it might be worth checking that it's not just disconnected from the laptop internally. Many just kindof slot into place and if thats jumped it'll cause this glitch.

Beyond that, I'd guess it's either the heads come into contact with the spinning hard drive surface or something electronic inside has become disconnected. Depends a bit on how far it dropped and if it was switched on at the time.

Unfortunately if it's gone caput then for this kindof damage your only real options are either bin it or send it to one of the data recovery services (eg: Seagate do one), but unless it's worth a lot of money then it's probably not worth it - think £800+.

[Iggle Piggle]

thanks for the suggestions, yes it's from an IBM X40 and if it was switched on when it fell it would have 'parked' the drive but it was switched off so it should have been safe !!
Its a little 1.8" sized thing, and it seems the rom chip is talking but the media isn't so that points to the heads have crashed. (it still spins up and seeks).
No real problem, I only backed up last week :-)