A site engineer in Widnes knocked a WD Elements off a desk, about a metre onto a hard floor. The MacBook stopped seeing it immediately. He pulled the cable out there and then rather than trying it again, and wrote to say he suspected the heads and hoped the platters were all right. He had it right on both counts, and his instinct had already done half the job.
| Media | A 2TB WD Elements that went off a desk onto a hard floor, about a metre, and has neither appeared nor been switched on since. |
| What was reported | WD Elements 2TB. Roughly a metre onto a hard floor. Vanished from the MacBook at once. Cable pulled out on the spot and never put back. Owner reads it as head damage and hopes the surfaces were spared. Inspection asked for. |
| Fault class | Mechanical. The fall put the heads out of true. The platters were clean, and they were clean because the drive was not given another chance to run with damaged heads over them. |
| On the bench | Kept unpowered as received. Profiled on a current-limited bench supply with the mechanism assessed, opened in clean air under laminar flow, head stack and platters inspected under a stereo microscope with the surfaces assessed for scoring across their full radius, matched donor heads fitted and alignment set, imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA, site records and photographs located in R-Studio and validated. |
A metre is plenty. Heads fly at a height measured in nanometres. The forces involved in a metre onto a hard floor are orders of magnitude beyond what that geometry tolerates, which is why an ordinary desk height fall is enough to end a drive's working life.
Not recognised is the consequence, not the fault. The drive cannot read its own start-up information, so it never gets as far as introducing itself. The machine reports nothing because nothing was said to it.
Cutting the power was the whole ball game. The damage from a fall is done in an instant. The damage from running afterwards accumulates every second, as heads that are no longer sitting correctly sweep over surfaces holding the data. He stopped that from ever starting.
Hoping the platters are spared is the right thing to hope for. It is the only variable that decides the outcome, and it is settled by inspection under magnification rather than by argument.
It arrived unpowered and stayed that way until it was on the bench. A current-limited bench supply was used to profile the mechanism without giving it a run, and the profile matched a head fault. It went into clean air under laminar flow.
The head stack showed the expected damage and the platters were assessed across their full radius under the stereo microscope. They were unmarked. Matched donor heads were fitted, alignment set, and the drive imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA. Site records and photographs were located in R-Studio from the image and validated by opening a sample.
Heads replaced over clean platters, drive imaged, everything back. This is what a dropped drive looks like when the owner does the one thing that helps, and it is worth saying so plainly, because most people do the opposite.
One drive, £300 + VAT, with 50% of that payable before the work started because the drive had to be opened. Mechanical work is outside no fix, no fee under the published terms.
Pull the cable out and leave it out. Do not try it once more to see how bad it is, do not try it on a different machine, and do not try it in the morning when it has had a rest. The fall does its damage instantly and the running afterwards does the rest, and the difference between those two is usually the difference between a full recovery and a partial one. Do not shake it to hear what it sounds like and do not put it in the freezer. Pack it so it cannot move inside the box, say how far it fell and onto what, and send it in unpowered.
Every case file here is written up from a real enquiry handled for households and businesses across Liverpool, Merseyside and the wider North West, anonymised so that nobody is identifiable. Each one gives the reasoning behind the diagnosis, the method the fault actually called for, and the equipment it was worked on.
An impacted drive has a head fault, and years of home attempts do not change what is sitting on the platters
A drive that needs the cable held at an angle has a failing joint at the port, and it always gets worse
A drive Windows offers to initialise is a drive that has not introduced itself properly, and initialising is the one thing you must not do
The diagnostic is free and takes 2 working days from arrival, the figure is fixed in writing, and logical faults run on no fix, no fee. Start online or ring the freephone.