Dropping an unplugged "spinning-type" hard drive less than 3 ft. onto a carpeted floor may not do much harm because when the drive is off, the heads are parked, out of the way and locked in for protection. And at that distance, the carpet will absorb most of the shock.
The same scenario on a hard surface may cause a slight mis-alignment of the drive motor/housing. And a slight misalignment is all you need to completely screw things up on a sensitive device.
Solution:
If we find this diagnosis to be true, We will need to remove your head and platter (disk) assembly from this damaged motor/housing and transplant it into a good motor/housing (the drive motor is built into the housing, replacing the housing replaces the motor).
If the transplant is successful and there are no other issues, we will begin the data recovery procedure which will take 1 to 4 days depending the amount of data to recover and how much damage occured. Severly damaged data can take up to a week to recover.
Here is the fix along with data recovery labor cost:
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HDD Data Recovery via Motor Replacement. $300 + parts ($25 – $125) |
We will validate the on-line estimate and give you a signed quote after looking at your drive.