The fault · dropped or knocked
Everything hangs on one question, the first we ask any Exeter caller: was it spinning when it fell? Switched off with the heads parked, a drive can absorb a surprising amount. Running, there are only nanometres between the heads and your data — nowhere for anything to give. Either way you get one good shot at recovery, and 'let's see if it still works' is how people spend it.
Talk it over with an engineer
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| The error | What it usually means | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| Clicking ever since it fell | The impact has put the heads out of alignment; the drive is stuck retrying | Off, and staying off |
| Beeping since it hit the floor | That's a stalled motor — heads held to the platter by stiction, or a bearing seized solid | Don't try to jolt it free |
| Undetected since the knock | Could be a head crash, a dead motor, or a cracked PCB or connector | Assess before any power |
| Fine at first, now deteriorating | Marginal damage that compounds for every hour it keeps running | Send it now, before it stops responding |
| A dropped SSD or memory stick that's died | No moving parts to damage — the failure is a solder joint, socket or board fracture | Electronics repair territory |
Your device is logged under its own case number the day it arrives. An engineer finds the fault, tells you plainly what stands a real chance of coming back, and writes you one fixed quote. Nothing is charged for that look, nothing obliges you, and paid work starts only when you say so.
A dropped drive is examined before a single volt reaches it — that first spin after an impact is exactly when damaged heads meet platter. When it does run, it runs once, under our eyes.
Damaged head assemblies are swapped for matched donors; stuck spindles freed, stiction-bound heads lifted clear, fractured boards and connectors made good.
The healthy majority of the disk is secured first; only once that's banked do we go back and tease out the sectors the impact hurt.
Before any fee falls due you see a full listing of everything recovered and approve it. Your files travel back on brand-new media, return postage on us, and the case stays open until you've confirmed everything opens on your own machine.
A datasheet line worth remembering: laptop drives typically tolerate around ~300G spinning and ~650G switched off, while some 3.5" desktop models are rated as low as ~30G in operation. Which means the best free insurance data ever had is shutting the machine down before you move it.
One portable drive held three years of client shoots. It hit the floor during a wedding load-out, and by the first test it was clicking. Two days on the imager with a donor head stack returned every gallery, including that morning's.
Mending the drive itself is seldom worth doing; getting the contents off it nearly always is. A head swap and slow, careful imaging bring most dropped drives back — provided it isn't switched on again in the meantime.
That's the worse case: a spinning drive shrugs off far less of a knock than one sitting parked, and mid-flight heads can dig into the platters. Power it off now, and treat the job as urgent.
More often than not, yes. With nothing mechanical inside to crash, a dropped SSD tends to suffer a cracked PCB, a snapped connector or dry solder joints — all electronic faults, leaving the NAND itself unharmed.
Almost certainly. Minor head or bearing damage grows each time the drive spins up. The drop decided the outcome; running it only hurries it along.
Each power-up of a failing device takes more data with it. Open a case first — the look-over is free whichever way it goes.