It Fell Out of My Bag

The decode

A fall that stops a working drive is a head fault. That the drive worked perfectly and stopped after the fall points at a head fault — a fall jolts the read/write heads, which float a hair above the spinning platters, and knocks them out of true, so afterwards they cannot read and the drive stops. So the fault is in the heads, disturbed by the impact, not in the recording: the fall stopped them reading, which is why the drive stopped, rather than the data being gone. His data is usually still on the platters, behind that head fault, reached by replacing the heads in clean air. A fall that stops a working drive is a head fault, not lost data.

Working before and stopped after points to the impact. That the drive was working perfectly right up to the fall and stopped after it places the fault with the impact, because a drive that was fine and then stops the moment it is dropped has had something disturbed by the shock — and in a hard drive that is the fine head mechanism, jolted out of true. So the sequence he describes locates the fault: not a gradual failure but a sudden one at the fall, which is the mark of a head fault from impact. His data is reached from the platters, the heads replaced. Working before and stopped after points to the impact.

It's worked in clean air, not run on. Because the fault is in the heads, the drive is opened in clean air — the heads and platters inspected under magnification, the heads replaced with matched donors, alignment set, and the drive imaged, so the data is read once the heads read again. And because a dropped drive with disturbed heads can score its platters if run, it must not be powered further, as each attempt risks the surface. His data is reached from the platters, by clean-air head replacement, which is how a dropped drive is recovered. The free diagnostic confirms the platters, and one fixed quote goes in writing before you commit to anything.

The honest prognosis rests on the platters. If the heads are at fault over intact platters — likely if the drive is not run repeatedly after the fall — clean-air head replacement lets it image and the data come back, often in full. If it was run on and the platters were scored, recovery narrows to the intact regions, confirmed before any work goes ahead.

On the bench

The drive was not run on given the fall. It was taken from its enclosure and profiled on a current-limited bench supply, the head behaviour assessed. It was opened in clean air under laminar flow, the heads and platters inspected under stereo microscope, matched donor heads fitted, alignment set. It was imaged on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA, the Mac filesystem parsed in R-Studio and the data validated.

The outcome

The head fault addressed in clean air, the drive imaged, and the data recovered onto fresh media. The diagnostic stage is free and reports back within two working days of the media arriving; after it you hold one written quote, fixed with VAT included. Opening a drive commits donor stock and clean-air bench time, so half the quoted figure is payable before that stage begins, and the remaining half falls due only once the recovery has succeeded — if it fails, the rest is never billed. The decode: a drive that fell and stopped has a head fault from the impact — worked in clean air, not run on. Addressed with sound platters, your data comes back.

Our case files are written up from genuine enquiries our lab has handled for customers across Swindon and Wiltshire, anonymised to protect client confidentiality. Each one describes the diagnostic and recovery approach our engineers apply to that fault, using the equipment listed.