My Book 500gb Spins up head doesn't read or write

Portable Drives My Passport
1

I have a My Book 500gb external.

Recently it dropped from about 4ft in height accidentally.  It was not plugged in or spinning at the time.  When I booted it back up it worked fine for about ten minutes and then would suddenly disconnect.  This continued to happen until now when it will not boot up at all.

I can hear the drives spinning but I can’t hear the arm moving at all (the gentle clicking).  I’m left with a whirring sound.  I’ve already tried testdisk and photorec.  They read the entire drive as errors BUT I never heard the sounds of the head reading or writing.

Disk management sees only a RAW partition on the drive, indicating that the drive registers (i.e. not a cable or connection issue).  The drive is formatted as FAT32 with approximately 350gb used.

My best guess right now is that the head tapped the platters when it dropped and hopefully the issue is firmware related.  Otherwise I may have to go for the all out hardware recovery.

Please, if anyone has any other thoughts or suggestions I am totally open to them–as long as they are safe.

I would throw this drive out if I could but the data is extremely important to me so I am forced to try to recover whatever amount is possible.

Thanks!

2

Well if the my book fell, then I’m pretty sure that’s the reason why is not working. Check the warranty and replace it if you can.

https://westerndigital.secure.force.com/WarrantyCheck?lang=en

3

Very unlikely that the issue is firmware related.  If you need your data back you may need to contact a professional data recovery service.

4

Totally agree here. There’s likely been a head crash and some platter damage to go along with it.

Best option is a professional data recovery service with cleanroom capability.

This disk will need to be taken apart.