Hi,

I have an external backup disk drive which fell to the floor from cca. 1 meter (I was carrying it together with other stuff and it slipped and fell). The floor is tiles, the HDD enclosure is a very thin one, Orico (like this):
https://i.imgur.com/IZXkQd9.jpg

The HDD in question is a HGST 2.5" 7200RPM 1TB USB 3.0, made in 2017 (similar to this one):
https://i.imgur.com/CRqmtBP.jpg

I've connected the HDD (in the encosure) to my Windows PC and was able to see the contents, opened a couple of files etc. I also ran CrystalDiskInfo and all was OK (blue).

Question: is it possible that the fall did no damage to the drive whatsoever? And how can I test to see if the drive is really/fully OK so that I can still trust it and use it for backups?

Thank you!

Hi.
For the moment do not trust it!
You must make a full backup of the important files before you do anything else!
Then.......
You will need to test the drive thoroughly. You can use more tools such as Victoria etc.
To test the drive properly you would need to erase the drive and then write to every sector and make a note of all the Smart data etc.

I don't need no files from the drive because it's a backup drive.

I'm "low-level" formatting it right now, using the https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Lo ... rmat-Tool/

It's at 30% and it seems OK so far (speed is 136MB/s via USB 3.0).

What should I do next to test it? How do i write to every sector? How will I know it was written (and can be read) properly to/from every sector?