I thought it would be a good idea to cover some “what if” scenarios. This post is primarily for someone who’s hard drive may have failed in a specific way and they are wondering if there is anything they can do to fix it themselves. While I am not against DIY solutions, I want to stress that if you are attempting DIY solutions on a drive that has valuable data on it that you are putting the data at your own risk, and it is ALWAYS better to send it to a professional immediately to ensure proper care.

What to do if: You knock over your external drive while it is on and now it isn’t recognized.

This is a very bad scenario. In this case the only good course of action is to NOT attempt to turn the drive on again and talk to a pro ASAP.

Why? Because significant damage has probably been caused to the internal mechanics of the drive that, if not treated properly, can render your data permanently inaccessible and gone forever.

There are a few different ways that this can happen:

1) The heads might crash into the platter causing a radial scratch on the media surface which possibly kills the head and renders that area of the disk permanently un-readable.

2) The Spindle Motor suffers damage and seizes. It will no longer spin up unless it is somehow loosened. Even if it can be loosened many times there is “eccentricity” that will cause the heads to be unable to read the media.

3) The heads may stick to the media, causing damage to the surface, the heads, and the motor. This can be made even worse if the user continues to attempt to re-power the drive.

What to do if: You plug the wrong power connector into your external drive or you plug in the Molex/SATA power connector in upside down.

In this scenario you have at minimum damaged the PCB (Printed circuit board) of the HDD. You will need knowledge of circuits and be handy with a VOM (Voltage-Ohm meter) or DMM (Digital Multi meter) to repair this. Typically the only damage that will occur to your drive in this case is to the power protection components of the drive (assuming they did their job and did not fail). You will need to repair these components to return the drive to service. Even if you manage to repair the drive it is never recommend you use the drive again; transfer your data to a new drive and back it up.