Data Recovery Case File · Portable Drives · The First Ten Minutes
Dropped External Drive That Clicks When Connected
His enquiry was two lines and contains the whole sequence that this archive most wishes it could intercept. A Western Digital external drive: "which was dropped. When connected to PC just made clicking noise." He is not sure of the capacity, which does not matter. What matters is the order of those two sentences, because it is the order almost everybody follows: the drive is dropped, and then — reasonably, instinctively, within a minute or two — it is plugged in to see whether it still works. That checking step is the one that costs data. A drive damaged in a fall does most of its additional damage during the attempts to find out how badly it was damaged, and this page is about the ten minutes in which that is decided.
| Media | Western Digital portable external hard drive — dropped; produces clicking on connection; capacity unknown to the owner |
| Reported situation | Impact event followed by connection to a host · clicking on power · no successful access since · owner uncertain of drive specification |
| Fault class | Impact damage to the head assembly — clicking indicating failed seeks; further power-up the principal remaining risk to the surfaces |
| Equipment used | No power applied on arrival · laminar flow bench inspection of heads and platter surfaces · matched donor head service · Atola Insight Forensic post-service assessment · PC-3000 Express with Data Extractor prioritised head-mapped imaging |
The decode: what the click is, and what checking costs
What happens in the drop: whether the drive was running matters enormously. Powered off, the heads are parked clear of the data surfaces on a ramp, and a fall in that state is frequently survived with no damage at all. Powered on, the heads are flying nanometres above spinning platters, and an impact can slam them into the surface. Either way, a fall can also knock the head assembly out of true, which is what produces his symptom.
What the click means: the drive is attempting to position its heads and failing to confirm where they are. Positioning depends on reading servo patterns written on the platters; if the heads cannot read them — because they are damaged, misaligned, or the surface beneath is — the drive retracts and tries again. That repeated attempt-and-retract is the click, and each cycle drags damaged heads across the surfaces holding his files.
Why the checking is the expensive part: here is the arithmetic that this page exists for. At the moment of the drop, the damage is whatever the impact caused — possibly nothing, possibly a displaced assembly, possibly heads resting on a platter. That damage is fixed and often modest. Then the drive is connected to see whether it works, and the mechanism begins cycling. Every cycle risks converting a mechanical misalignment into surface damage, and surface damage is the one thing in this trade that no technique reverses. Owners typically connect a dropped drive several times — to a PC, then a laptop, then with a different cable, then once more the next day in case it recovered. That is not unreasonable behaviour; it is simply the most expensive possible response, and nobody tells them beforehand. The instruction is blunt: after a drop, plug it in once at most, and if there is any unusual sound, unplug it and stop.
On not knowing the capacity: he apologises for it unnecessarily. The drive reports its own specification during assessment, and the model and capacity are read from the device rather than from the owner's memory. What is genuinely useful from him instead is the history: that it was dropped, roughly from what height and onto what, whether it was powered at the time, and how many times it has been connected since. Those change the plan; the capacity does not.
On the bench
The drive was not powered on arrival — after an impact with clicking, the surfaces are inspected before anything is switched on, because their condition determines the plan rather than following it. Under the laminar flow bench the head assembly was examined for the displacement or damage the fall had caused, and the platters for the scoring that connection attempts can produce. Matched donor heads were fitted, the Atola Insight Forensic confirmed the serviced mechanism, and imaging ran immediately on the PC-3000 Express under Data Extractor — head-mapped and prioritised, healthy regions captured completely before any damaged zone was approached, and the whole pass completed in one supervised session.
The outcome
The head assembly replaced with matched donor parts and the drive imaged in a single supervised session, with the contents verified and delivered. Free assessment, one fixed written figure including VAT, 50% of parts and labour upfront with the balance only on successful recovery. The decode, for the ten minutes after a drop: the impact sets the initial damage, and it is often modest — what compounds it is the entirely natural business of checking, because clicking means the heads are cycling across the surfaces and each attempt can turn a mechanical fault into permanent scoring; a drive that was switched off when it fell fares far better than one that was running; and the useful information is not the capacity, which the drive reports itself, but the history — whether it was powered, and how many times it has been connected since.
You have just dropped a drive
Connect it once at most, and the moment you hear anything unusual, unplug it and stop. That single decision usually determines how much comes back. The fall sets an initial amount of damage — often a displaced head assembly rather than anything catastrophic — but clicking means the heads are cycling and failing across your data surfaces, and every attempt risks converting that into permanent scoring that no laboratory can reverse. So don't try a second computer, don't try another cable, and don't plug it in the following day to see whether it settled down. Keep it flat, still and the right way up. Don't shake it to hear whether anything is loose, don't freeze it, and don't open it. When you ask for help, tell them whether the drive was powered on when it fell and how many times it has been connected since — that matters far more than the capacity, which the drive reports itself.
Stop connecting it — call Leeds Data Recovery on 0113 322 3083; surfaces inspected before any power, heads replaced with matched donor parts, imaged in one supervised session.
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Our case files are drawn from genuine enquiries received by our laboratory over the past ten years, anonymised to protect client confidentiality. Each one describes the diagnostic and recovery procedure our engineers apply to that fault, using the equipment listed.