It stood upright on a table in a house in Wallasey and one day it went over. It stopped working there and then and it has clicked ever since, on the rare occasions anybody has tried it. Somebody had the lid off years ago for a look and then screwed it back down. The family had assumed for a long time that it was a lost cause.
| Media | A Western Digital 500GB external drive that toppled while standing vertically, stopped working immediately, clicks when powered, and was opened once outside clean air years afterwards. |
| What was reported | WD 500GB external drive, stood vertically, fell over on a table, stopped working at that moment, clicks when powered with nothing appearing, opened once years ago out of curiosity, data still wanted. |
| Fault class | Mechanical. The fall knocked the heads out of true and they have never been able to read since, which is the clicking. Contamination from the old opening was present and had to be cleaned. |
| On the bench | Not powered further. Profiled on a current-limited bench supply with the click pattern characterised, opened in clean air under laminar flow, contamination from the earlier opening cleaned, head stack and platters inspected under a stereo microscope with the surfaces assessed for scoring, matched donor heads fitted and alignment set, imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA, files located in R-Studio and validated. |
A drive standing upright has further to fall than it looks. Toppling off a table is enough to put the heads out of true, and it is common precisely because vertical drives are easy to catch with a sleeve.
The clicking has been the same message the whole time. Heads seeking, failing to find the servo pattern, resetting and trying again. It has been saying the same thing since the day it fell.
Years on a shelf are not a problem. Nothing on a platter decays on a household timescale. A drive that fell in one decade is as recoverable in the next, provided nobody keeps running it.
The old opening added work, not a verdict. Dust that got in years ago is still in there and has to be cleaned before anything is spun. That is bench time. It is not the same as damage to the surfaces, and in this case the surfaces were clean.
It was not run further. The click pattern was characterised on a current-limited bench supply, which matched a head fault, and it went into clean air under laminar flow.
Contamination from the earlier opening was cleaned before the platters were allowed to turn. The head stack was inspected under the stereo microscope and the surfaces assessed across their radius for scoring, which they did not show, largely because the drive had been left alone for most of its life. Matched donor heads were fitted, alignment set, and the drive imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA. Files were located in R-Studio and validated.
Cleaned, reheaded, imaged, and the family's files came back off a drive they had written off for the better part of a decade.
One drive, £300 + VAT, with 50% payable before the work started because the drive had to be opened in clean air. Mechanical faults are outside no fix, no fee, and the balance fell due only once the recovered files had been checked.
Do not keep testing it once a year to see whether it has fixed itself. It has not, and each attempt spins damaged heads over surfaces that are otherwise fine. The good news is that time is genuinely on your side here: data does not fade off a platter, and a drive that failed years ago is no worse off today provided it has been left alone. If somebody has had it open, say so, because contamination has to be cleaned before anything turns and it is quicker to know than to find out. Pack it so it cannot shift in transit and post it in.
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.
A large drive that will not register has a firmware, board or mechanical cause, and only a direct read separates them
Clicking is a head fault and a rattle after a knock is usually loose hardware, and both are settled in one clean-air visit
Write errors are an early warning, and the right response is one careful image, not weeks of retries
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.