I have the Western Digital Caviar Green 2TB Desktop Elements hard disk drive (model WD20EADS - 00R6B0). One day I came home from school after my mom cleaned my room, she handled and broke my hard disk drive regardless of how many times I told her to not touch the "hi-tec" stuff.

I connected it to my computer and my computer recognizes a "disk drive" in "My Device Manager" under the "Disk Drive" section. But ultimately, you can't really do anything with it because it is absent from "My Computer" or anywhere else such as the partition screen.

I tried to connect it with a SATA cable, where I removed my primary internal hard disk drive (am I supposed to do this?), and plugged the broken HDD in its place, where the computer then said "no device to boot". So I took it that it either means that the drive is completely broken or I am supposed to have my primary internal HDD plugged in with the broken one. The problem here is that I have a micro ATX motherboard and it has only about two SATA connector locations, which are used up (do they sell adapters for this?). I haven't tried to unplug the SATA from my DVD rom and put the broken HDD in its place. I will do that after I get a confirmation, because it is extremely bothersome to unplug and re-plug the thick and un-wieldy cables in a tiny crevice dwarfed by my giant graphics card.

Also to note is that every time, whether connected by USB or SATA cable, my HDD makes an "Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzz" noise a total of five times after getting connected. The light still comes on when I put it in an external HDD casing. It makes absolutely no clicking nor clunking noises.

I have tried percussive maintenance to a certain extent by just bumping lightly on the bigger side of the HDD. This did not work maybe because I bumped so lightly.

I have contacted WD support, they determined that it is broken. They even shipped me a free power cable to see if it was the power cable's fault.

So is anyone able to give advice on what are my other alternatives? apply more percussion etc.?

If your data is important to you, I suggest that you get it assessed by a data recovery pro before you render it completely unrecoverable, if you haven't done so already.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

I don't know, it depends on what they charge. I might get a new HDD, but it would be very helpful to have some files back.

Most labs offer a free assessment to determine the cost. Based on what you are describing, you are certainly looking at a price higher than $500 with most credible labs. If the data isn't valuable, just replace the drive.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery