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General discussion

Dropped external drive, now have 3 options

Feb 5, 2012 6:20AM PST

I have a hitachi touro 1tb external hd that fell less than 1.5 feet. Now my computer won't recognize it. Should I:

<div>1. Give up all hope and buy another,
2. Break in and connect the drive directly to my computer (removing the dc and usb switches of course), or
3. Find out if there is a way to fix it?

Discussion is locked

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You do need to rule out whether it's the drive
Feb 5, 2012 7:02AM PST

or in the case. If it will connect directly to your PC, that would be a great test. Sometimes you can hear subtle sounds when a drive is struggling. Usually this happens when they first turn on. You hear a set of clicks that might repeat several times. If it's in your PC, Windows might recognize it by it's circuit board. There's always the chance you could get lucky and just have loosened some connection but you won't know without opening it. Good luck.

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I was thinking the same thing
Feb 5, 2012 7:10AM PST

I do hear a noise, but it is not clicking. It almost sounds like the drive is coming to life, but it is very faint. I have never listened to my drives, or other hardware for that matter, to hear what they sound like under normal operation. What I do know, is it is not clicking.

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The drive itself is connected in the housing
Feb 5, 2012 9:48AM PST

in a similar manner that a drive inside your PC is connected. I've never found the innards of one of these cases to be all that sturdy. But the easiest test is to remove the drive and connect it to your PC. If it's not recognized by your MB BIOS, it's probably dead. And even if it's recognized, it may not function properly. The worst thing that can happen is for the heads to get un-parked and land on the platters. Normally they float on a very thin layer of air that is generated by the spinning disk platters once they reach high enough RPMs. Heads that land on the platters can be easily damaged and fail to function properly. In the simplest of terms, when your hard drive initializes, it tries to home itself so it knows where to begin. If it cannot find its home, it won't work. A dropped hard drive that damages the heads is a goner. Data can be recovered by expensive services but users cannot fix them. Again...good luck. You're not the first to have this happen and bring the problem here.