Are hard drives supposed to go 'boing'?

Hi there!

I accidentally dropped my little 30GB portable drive the other day getting out of the car. I was slightly worried but remembered the reassurances of the manufacturers specs that these things could take 500Gs when unpowered and survive. Then I plugged it in and, instead of making the usual 'start up the spindle' whirring sound it made a 'where are my heads' click click sound. No drive appeared on the USB chain. I tried a few different combinations and another machine, but nothing worked - it looks like I've adgered my drive.

It's really only the 100KB or so of source code on the drive that I'd like back; the 20GB of mixes I already have elsewhere. A pity, then, that I hadn't backed it up at all recently.

I looked around for replacement drives and, to my surprise, found exactly the same model of drive still on sale. Hmmm, I thought; maybe I could put the old platter in the new drive and I could get the data off. Of course, the risk of this is that I somehow adger the new mechanism or new platter and therefore end up having paid for two dead drives rather than one. I don't like throwing good money after bad for no result.

So my question is: has anyone else tried this kind of operation? What kind of success have you had from it? Any good pages you'd recommend on how to do it? I've tried searching Google but I mostly get stories about replacing your hard disk in portable players and laptops.

Preparing to write off my work,

Paul

I have had success in the past simply removing the cover, plugging in the drive, and when powing the computer on, spinning the platters by hand to give them a jump start. Once they started to spin, they kept on doing so. I then copied everything off immediately to a new drive and all was well. Keep in mind, this was important data and there was NO other option. If nothing else, try spinning them by hand before you try swapping platters. Just take care not to touch the platters themselves. Only touch the spindle holding them in place. Also, be prepared for the fact that there may be nothing you can do to save your data. In my case, when I powered the drive on with it in my hand, I could feel the drive shudder, but not spin up, so I had a pretty good feeling that a jump start would do the trick.

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I have had success in the past simply removing the cover, plugging in the drive, and when powing the computer on, spinning the platters by hand to give them a jump start. Once they started to spin, they kept on doing so. I then copied everything off immediately to a new drive and all was well. Keep in mind, this was important data and there was NO other option.

I actually did the same thing with my notebook drive and it worked. But I found that as the drive heated up, it would freeze again. Got to be pretty painful, but I just repeated the process to get the data.

Since I had to do this a few times, I learned that a good "wack" on a hard surface, just as the drive was trying to power up worked too. I've heard this from many people as well.

However, what I learned was that if I waited to plug in the drive just as the computer was looking for it (during bootup) rather than have it plugged in prior, the PC would detect it without me giving it a good wack. The initial spinning of the platters manually may have helped loosen the bearing (which was my problem I think).

When you open the cover, the "axel" of the thing will most lkely have a star shapped slot on it. Have a screw driver of that type handy and hold your breath during the whole process. It'll encourage you to hurry up!

Good luck.