Two drives dropped from the same height can end up in entirely different conditions, and the difference is whether they were spinning. Powered off, the heads are parked and the mechanism tolerates real shock. Running, they are flying a fraction of a hair above the platter — and an impact closes that gap.
$ mdr diagnose /dev/sda → Device: Seagate ST1000LM048 · 1 TB · 2.5" → Status: DROPPED — head crash / heads not reading → Client: confidential · Burnley, Greater Manchester $ mdr engineer-working → Donor heads matched: from stock · 0 days wait → Head-stack swap: complete → Imaging: 0.81 TB / 1.00 TB (81%) $ mdr verify → ✓ photos — 58,210 files → ✓ university_work — 3,940 files → ✓ everything reachable — recovered
That test is the commonest way a dropped drive goes from recoverable to partial. If the heads are resting on the platter, powering up drags them across the surface holding your data before the drive has any chance of parking them properly.
Two drives dropped from the same height onto the same floor can end up in completely different conditions.
A drive that was powered off when it fell has its heads parked off the platter, on a ramp at the edge of the disk, held there by design precisely because devices get dropped. Modern drives tolerate substantial shock in that state, and a laptop knocked off a desk while shut down frequently has nothing wrong with it at all.
A drive that was spinning has its heads flying a fraction of a hair above a surface turning at 5,400 or 7,200 rpm. An impact closes that gap. The heads strike the platter, and where the coating comes away the data on those tracks is gone permanently — not hard to read, gone. That is the difference between a routine job and a partial recovery, and it is decided in the moment of impact rather than by anything done afterwards.
Heavy impacts rarely cause just one problem, which is why these take longer than other mechanical faults.
Simple, free, and they preserve every option.
If the machine is still running, shut it down. Every additional rotation with damaged heads widens whatever damage exists.
People instinctively tip a drive to hear what is loose. If anything inside has come free, moving it distributes debris across the platters.
Not even briefly, and not in a clean-looking room. Household dust in the head gap causes exactly the scoring you are trying to avoid.
That single detail changes the handling from the moment it arrives — a dropped drive is opened for inspection before anything is powered, rather than tested first.
The price is fixed. What varies is what is left to recover.
A single dropped or physically damaged drive is from £300 +VAT, quoted after a free 48-hour diagnostic, with a 50% deposit because donor parts and clean-air time are committed before the platters can be assessed.
The diagnostic will tell you what the impact actually did, including where scoring limits what is achievable. If it shows the damaged areas cover material you specifically need, you will hear that before paying anything — a partial recovery is worth knowing about in advance rather than discovering at the end.
Get the device to us with a short note on what happened. The diagnostic that follows costs nothing, and the figure that follows it is fixed in writing before any work begins.
Nothing can begin until the device is on the bench, which makes this the only step that needs anything from you. Pack it properly, put your details in with it, and send it over. What follows is a free diagnostic and a written figure, in that order.
Posting it? Use something tracked and insured — whatever is on the drive is worth considerably more than the postage. Bringing it in? Weekdays, 9am to 5:30pm, and it still wants packing as above for the journey.
Tell us what the device is, what it is doing, and anything already tried — an engineer will come back with a realistic view of the odds and a price band, before you commit to posting anything.
We’ll be in touch shortly. If it’s urgent, call 0161 871 0788.
The questions we hear most about dropped and impact-damaged drives.
Usually a substantial proportion, and it depends almost entirely on whether it was running. Dropped while powered off, the heads are parked and the drive frequently survives untouched. Dropped while spinning, the heads can strike the platter and cause immediate permanent damage.
No — that test is what turns a recoverable drive into a partial one. If the heads are resting on the platter, powering up drags them across the surface before the drive can park them.
Yes, enough to back it up today. A drive can take a knock, keep working, and spread damage quietly over the following days. If a running machine takes a jolt and then behaves oddly, copy the important data off immediately.
Where the magnetic coating has been removed there is nothing left to read, by any technique. Undamaged areas of the same platter usually image normally, so the result is often a partial recovery with the missing files named individually.
Often, and often completely. The platter pack is transferred into a donor chassis with its rotational alignment preserved — precise work, but the platters themselves are usually undamaged by the seizure.
From £300 plus VAT after a free 48-hour diagnostic, with a 50% deposit for clean-air and donor work and the balance due only on success.
Every repair is backed by a 10,000-piece donor store, opens with a free written diagnostic, and on most jobs is no fix, no fee. Begin today.