Dropped drive. Argh!

Hi all,

Aplogies if a similar thread has already been made by othewrs, I had a quick search but couldn’t find a recent one.

I have a 2tb Elements external drive, had it for over two years. Yesterday, it fell about a foot onto the floor and is now no longer recognised by my PC. I have tried looking on device manager, free recovery software etc, but nothing picks it up.

When turned on, the light continues to flash on the drive (I cannot remember if it used to flash as it does now, or was a solid light) and I can hear what sounds like spinning or whirring when it is initally powered up, but then it stops making this sound. I’m pretty sure this sound wasn’t audible before.

I have read had connecting it directly to the motherboard might help pick it up (I’m assuming much like a regular internal drive?).

I’m wondering if anyone has any experience with connecting it internally, what kind of cable I would need to do it, etc. I hope it’s pretty simple, as my usual techie friend is out of the country for a while. There are some irreplaceable photots on it that I really want to get back.

Thanks for reading and any assistance.

By the way, my motherboard is a Asus P5N-T Deluxe, if that’s of any assistance.

It might connect as an internal but dropped drives are frequently physically damaged and beyond do it yourself fixes. If you are considering professional recovery don’t do anything more.

Joe

If you dropped the drive while you are writing to / reading from the HDD, then your HDD is as good as dead.

Even professional data recovery will have hard time to recover for you.

Connect to the motherboard is by using normal SATA cable.