It fell about half a metre and stopped working. A mate in Kirkby with a torx set and good intentions had the lid off it on a kitchen table, decided he could not fix it, and put it back together. The owner's question when it arrived was the only one that mattered: is there still a chance.
| Media | A Seagate external that died the moment it hit the floor from about half a metre, later taken apart on a kitchen table by somebody who could not put it right. |
| What was reported | Seagate external. Half a metre onto a floor, dead from that moment. Owner reckoned it mechanical. A friend had the lid off, got nowhere, and screwed it back down. Owner asking whether there is any chance left. |
| Fault class | Mechanical. The fall put the heads out of true. The unplanned opening added airborne contamination to the inside of the drive, which made the job longer but did not change what was on the platters. |
| On the bench | Not powered further. Profiled on a current-limited bench supply, opened in clean air under laminar flow, contamination from the earlier opening identified and 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. |
The answer to his question is usually yes. Opening a drive in a kitchen is not good, but it is not the same as destroying it. The data is written to the platters magnetically. Dust landing on a platter is a contaminant to be cleaned off, not an eraser.
What the opening actually cost. A drive is filtered and sealed for a reason: at operating speed the heads fly closer to the surface than a dust particle is wide. Every particle that got in is something that has to be found and cleaned before the drive can be spun again, and that is bench time. It is a cost in labour, not usually a cost in data.
The one thing that would have ruined it. Powering the drive up after it had been opened, with contamination inside and heads already damaged from the fall. That combination scores platters quickly. He did not try it, which is the reason this case has a good ending.
The original fault was still the original fault. Half a metre onto a hard floor is enough to knock heads out of true. That was true before the lid came off and it was still true afterwards.
It was not powered. It went onto a current-limited bench supply to be profiled, then into clean air under laminar flow for the work proper.
Contamination from the earlier opening was identified and cleaned before anything was allowed to turn. The head stack was inspected under the stereo microscope and the platters checked across their radius for scoring, which they did not show. Matched donor heads were fitted, alignment set, and the drive imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA. Files were located in R-Studio from the image and validated.
Cleaned, reheaded, imaged, and the files came back. The extra work the earlier opening created was real but it was work, not a wall.
One drive, £300 + VAT. The drive had to be opened in clean air, which is mechanical work, so 50% of the quote was payable before the bench started and the balance only once the files were confirmed. No fix, no fee applies to logical faults and this was not one.
Do not power it up to see whether they made it worse. That single test, with contamination inside and damaged heads, is what turns a recoverable drive into a scored one. Close it, keep it flat, and say honestly what was done and when, because knowing the lid has been off changes how the bench approaches it and saves guessing. An unsuccessful opening does not delete anything. The data is on the platters and the platters do not care who has looked at them, only what has been dragged across them.
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.