I clumsily dropped my IBM 20 gig removable pc hard drive today, it fell out of an unclosed zipper in my backpack . The drop was no more than 3 feet, but apparently the concrete was enough to do it in! Apparently now it won't receive any power.. I had hoped the *plastic* removable case would take the brunt of the damage, but... it appears not..

Anyhow, its an IBM and it is most likely under warranty (i am assuming that IBMs warranty is like western digital, 3 years?); and I of course will mention nothing of the "falling incident" to IBM. So my question is.. Does anyone know if they (IBM) do any kind of data recovery on the drives they replace, if you specially request it? Or do they basically just see if it works, and then if it doesnt slap a new one in your box and return it? If not, does anyone have any recommendations on where I could get that done? How much does that type of thing cost?

Are you sure that the drive itself has failed and not just the tiny bit of interface circuitry in the case?

I assume you are talking about the interface circuitry in the removable "casing"? I thought that might be the problem, so I removed the actual drive from the caddy case and just plugged it in manually, but nada. It doesn't seem to be spinning up or anything... That's what you were referring to right?

Yep.

Have you tried banging the drive down on the desk while it is connected up?

Unlikely as David's suggestion sounds I can vouch for the fact that giving the drive a good hard knock in all planes can recover functionality just long enough to get data off of the drive. I have recovered data from three failed drives in this way over the years.

Obviously you only want try this when you have made sure you have tried everything else and have decided you can't afford to pay for proper data recovery. Make sure you bin the drive afterwards, so you don't risk forgetting about it and end up reusing it later...

/me remembers a Macintosh we had at one time, and it wouldn't boot if left off overnight until after we gave the hard disk a gentle thwack with a screwdriver handle. Did that for months before it went completely Tango Uniform.

And if THAT fails to work, I have recovered data from 5 drives that failed to boot by taking it apart and MANUALLY spinning the disks to get them rolling, once the initial inertia is overcome, they work fine... No idea how long, I just ran them long enough to do a ghost and then promptly threw them away. It works better if you have them spinning BEFORE power is applied. And don't forget, they spin COUNTER clockwise. Oh, and take care not to touch the drive platters themselves. They are exceedingly sensitive. (although the outer .5 mils or so is safe as no data is stored there. )

I know I know, it sounds really goofy, but I swear, I've done it 5 times b4, and only 1 failed to recover data properly.

Mason

Oh, and if it is getting ZERO power, as in, not even trying to spin, If you can find another drive of the EXACT same make/model, the circuit boards are easily swapped, and all the electronics are stored there. The only thing inside the drive is the actual platters, the motor, and the read/write arm. No power electronics there.

Mason

It wouldn't hurt to remove and refit the pcb in case you have a bad connection to the drive mechanics.

I haven't tried squarely beating the hard drive yet, but I willl definitely give that a try when I get home! The hard drive is still under warranty, so I believe the other suggestions (replacing the circuitry, etc) would probably void any chance of getting the HD replaced.. but I will try this before sending it back to the manufaturer for a replace...

(Sure would be nice to get all those MP3s back without re-ripping........)

I've actually recovered data off an old drive by manually spinning it up too. Then again, it was a gigantic old ESDI hard drive from the neolithic age. YMMV.

While "thumping" the drive may work, In my experience it works in approx. 1 out of 30 cases, so don't get your hopes up too high. Especially if you are hearing the "click of death".

Yeah, that's true about the warranty issue. I have always been more concerned with the actual DATA than the drive itself... But hey, a free drive is a free drive.

Mason