Hi,
I am in need of an advice of You more experienced HDDGuru members.
My laptop was showing instability for long time. I thought It is win 8.1 problem as usual so I decided to backup and reinstall. I fully formated my 6 years old external Adata rugged backup HDD to make sure it is in good condition. It took 7 hours btw (a lot of bad sectors and errors maybe?). Then I started copying files. For some reason I was getting random I/O device errors and the copy process was stalling every time. I restarted and tred to copy several times. The same error. I decided to do it with fresh head next day.
Yesterday, turning the laptop on, it felt from the sofa on a stone floor while booting windows and switched off. When I turned it on, it showed a DOS error message. I could not read it as it was split into four corners. Like a broken screen although phusically intact. I restarted and got blue win loader screen "Insert bootable media and press F8". I never saw that message before. It was not a BSOD.
I also heard a clicking noise in the HDD.
I took the HDD out, went to neighbour and connected it via USB. On the HDD controller there is a HDD LED indicator of "work in progress". It was flashing, but the HDD has not been recognised. Diskpart showed some hardware without name and 0bites available of total 0 bites. As I started to realise that I effectively lost all my data I became frustrated. Recovery program "Recover my files" detected the same.
I opened the HDD. For the first time ever
The plates were spiining fluently as fas as I can say, but the head was going there and back, from the heads stop to the plates and there five times from the plates center to the rim and back to the center. Then it returned to the stop and stayed there for a while. After like 10, maybe 20 seconds all over again. This was the clicking noise I`ve heard. It was trying to read the plates.
I disconnected the HDD and moved the heada little in the free space between the stop and plates. It was not showing any resistance nor irregular movement.
I connected the HDD again. The head moved to the centre and going back to the rim it stopped there on the rim while the plates were spinning. I disconnected the HDD immediately and moved the head out of the plates to its stop with my finger.
Afterwards the head stopped any kind of movement. The top plate is not showing any kind of physical damage. I hope the lover ones neither, however I cannot see.

A professional recovery is out of my reach as I am currently unemployed. I can get maybe 50 bucks to buy a donor HDD, but thats it. There are days when I have only bread with butter to eat.
It is my only PC. I have there all my pictures, documents, studies, music. The disk is Seagate Momentus 5400.6, 500GB, model ST9500325AS. I think it has three plates, although I did not count.

What do you recommend, how can I recover my data ? I can obtain a donor HDD of the same specs (model, PN, FW, site).

Hi there.

Unfortunately you have made some wrong moves whilst dealing with this drive, unless this is a troll post what will happen now is a torrent of information that may overwhelm you and cause you to perhaps try things that will damage your drive even further. What you need to do now is just stop what ever it is you are doing with your drive. Lid on. Put in a draw and do nothing further for a while until you read the advice that may or may not follow.

_________________
DataWreck Data Recovery Services
www.DataWreck.co.uk

You know about donors and what needs to be matched.. but have apparently opened it up and did what you say? something is not quite right in my humble opinion

Now I know that I should not have moved the heads, probably not even to try recovery programme.
Clever people learn from mistakes of others, normal people from their own mistakes and stupid ones do the mistakes again.
I searched all the info after everything happened. After I realised that the HDD is damaged I stopped my attempts and checked the web. That's how I found this forum and all the magic of raising HDD from dead.

The disk is now resting in the drawer. However I doubt that I will pay several hundreds dollars for recovery in the future. Is there something that can be done DIY ? I read some articles about head replacement for example.

I would urge you to leave it in the drawer, get a job and save up for a recovery. Opening it and moving things about has severely lessened your chances at recovery. The drop even more so. I just do not think this one is at all DIY.

HaQua thanks for your advice. I appreciate it a lot. I do not try any further attempts unless there is a reasonable chance of success.
This drop costed more than 50 dollars for a new hdd. Looking for a job without PC is a challange and amongst other data, my CV is on that disk as well

Sad to say that it sounds like this drive is dead. Looks like you will have to count your losses and try and collect all your data again from other places like facebook and all that. When the laptop fell on the floor the hard drive was booting. The impact damages one of the heads and thats it.

When you opened the drive you exposed it to the surrounding air which is not filtered.

Plus you moved the heads with your finger, causing more damage.

Sadly it will cost 1.000's to repair, its always best to keep backups.

Sorry about your case...

Shane

Hi Shane, thanks for reading my post and your answer. You are right, the irony is that it felt when I was going to back up.
I always keep copy of my files on external disk. That disk was fully formated the day before( to prepare it for the backup).
The laptop felt together with the empty external disk connected to it with a USB cable. Because it is a rugged Adata disk it was not damaged. Now I have functional empty rugged HDD and a full damaged internal one :/
(Un)-fortunately I keep my privacy and i don't do Facebook, nor do I post my pics all over the web.
I read about the prices of a professional restoration. They are out of my league. Because of that I am asking here for DIY repair.

Leachimflow: you shouldn't trust that dropped external Adata drive.
All that ruggedization is just a marketing trick. Under a piece of rubber there's exactly the same hard drive, which is not tougher than an internal drive anyhow.

You say you fully formatted the external drive, so that would have over-written the old data, making recovery from it impossible. However, if you hadn't done a full format, just a quick format, you could likely recover much data from it. The odds of recovering data from the laptop hard drive are slim to none, given what you have done to it. Sorry.

_________________
Sabo Computer Repairs & Data Recovery

By nature I do not trust any hdd, that`s why I always had a backup HDD. Of course the HDD inside that rugged HDD is the same, but as I can see now that piece of a soft rubber did at least something compared to hard plastic case of my laptop. I wish mylaptop had the same kind of plastic around it
Now I am downloading Linux to make a bootable USB to be at least able these pages on a PC instead of my phone
To LarrySabo: yes the format was complete. All clusters erased to 0s. Not a single bit is left on the external disk. I run a recovery programme anyway and of course the result was zero

What about replacing the head? I have read about this practice. Can this help? What risk is there?

If ithelps and the disk will work, how can I copy bite by bite the content of damaged HDD on a new one?

I agree with Larry, at this point your chance of successful data recovery even by a professional is extremely low. I'd say scrap it and consider the data lost. Or put it into storage until you have $2000 to spend on it (sadly would have only been a few hundred if you went to a pro first).

Next time you have an issue like this, ask first before trying a million things.

_________________
Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

You are right. All of you.
The rugged disk is the same as my internal one. However they both felt simultaneously and the rugged one still works. I wish my laptop would have the same latex rubber around it, as the rugged Adata disk has.
If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn`t touch the head. All those informations I learned one by one. However even knowing all that from the beginning, I wouldn`t have other option. 'Few' hundred is above my paycheck. Therefore I was and I still am limited to DIY repair.
On the other hand, to try something not costing hundreds but tens can be an option for me. Pls. consider this before telling me to go to a professional repair. I am not a company, nor rich individual. I am limited in my options and I am asking for best advice in DIY repair.
I have read about head replacements. Could this possibly help? What risk am I facing considering the fact, that now the data is effectively lost as most of you noted earlier? If it works how to raw copy bite by bite from the disk?

The do it yourself option ended the minute that drive started clicking. Without specialized tools, equipmnet, and experience you can't fix this yourself. You have less than a .001% chance on a Seagate drive. Now that you've opened it and messed around outside of a clean room, you have exactly 0% chance of fixing this.

Even for professionals with proper clean environment, tools, knowledge these drives have about a 50% recovery rate when they are clicking.

Sorry, but your original attempts to copy the data using the wrong software killed it. Opening the drive, finished it completely off. There's no cheap fix, period! Had you asked on here before the drive started clicking, we could have walked you through some methods to more safely clone the data without killing the drive.

_________________
Data Medics - Hard Drive, SSD, and RAID Data Recovery Service Company

The only way now to get data is to see what can be done with the backup drive. Did you do a full detailed format, or was is a fast one.

The reason the external disk was okay from the fall is because it could have been sleeping and not damaged.

Sure, your DIY option is replicate as best as possible what a specialist would do.
1) Cleaning, not much u can do as the environment is not optimal and inexperienced in cleaning
2) You will need a compatible part to replace the failed read-write mechanism. Obviously no mistakes can happen in the physical rebuilding process. Compatibility frequently requires more parameters matching than those on the label.
3) you will need to clone the drive to another drive, which is an addional cost to that of the part or borrow one
4) you will likely use software for the cloning, which more than likely will not be successful.
5) All of this could be in vain as there could already be media damage

But all you could do is try if you think it is still worth it.

Kind regards

_________________
Hard Disk Drive (HDD), Solid State Drive (SSD, SATA, NVMe, etc), USB Flash Drive and RAID Data Recovery Specialist in Massachusetts

Labtech.
you understood my limitations and I am grateful for your words.
Considering what has been done it cannot get worse. In best case I will get something back. In worst case I am back where I am now not having the data.
I am not going to try cleaning the drive. I don't know how nor posses the tools.
Do you know what to check to ascertain the compatibility of the head?
I have a disk to copy the content, but what software do you recommend?