It "dropped from the bed to the floor - very short distance", and that distance is the part she kept coming back to. But the drive is "now no longer registering on my laptop" and it "makes a clicking noise when trying to start up", with thousands of photographs on it she would be devastated to lose. A short fall is still a fall, and the clicking settles the argument. Read heads ride a few nanometres above a platter turning at five thousand revolutions a minute; the gap is smaller than a smoke particle. Two feet onto a carpeted floor is a long way at that scale. The height is not the evidence — the noise is.
| Media | A hard drive dropped a short distance from a bed to the floor, now clicking on start-up and no longer registering, holding thousands of photographs. |
| Reported situation | Hard drive · dropped a short distance, bed to floor · no longer registers on the laptop · clicking noise on start-up · thousands of photographs · owner distressed at the prospect of losing them. |
| Fault class | Head fault from the impact — heads damaged or knocked out of alignment, unable to read, so the drive never presents itself. Photographs intact on the platters; further start-up attempts are what would change that. |
| Equipment used | Not started again once the clicking was described · assessed on a current-limited bench supply and the click characterised · opened in filtered air under laminar flow, heads and platter surfaces checked under stereo magnification, matched donor heads installed and the alignment set · read out to an image on DeepSpar, driven through PC-3000 UDMA, the photographs found in R-Studio and checked by opening them. |
People measure drops in feet, and drives measure them in something else entirely. The flying height of a modern read head is a few nanometres — a fraction of the thickness of a fingerprint — and the assembly holding it is a slender arm pivoting at speed. A short fall onto a hard floor, or a knock against a desk leg while the drive is running, delivers a shock that is enormous by those standards. It is why 'it only fell a little way' is one of the most common openings we hear, and one of the least useful pieces of evidence.
The evidence that does count is the sound. Clicking, ticking, or a rhythmic thunk on start-up is the head assembly attempting to find the drive's own reference data, failing, retracting and going round again. Because it never finds that data, the drive never completes its start-up routine, and because it never completes its start-up routine the laptop is shown nothing. 'Not registering' and 'clicking' are not two faults; they are one fault seen from two sides.
Which leaves the photographs, and they are the good news. They are recorded on the platters, and platters are considerably more robust than the parts flying above them. What harms them is a damaged head being dragged across the surface, which is what happens every time somebody plugs the drive back in to see whether it has come right. Once, twice, and the odds are still excellent. Twenty times, and the recovery starts having gaps in it.
It was never started again, which is the single most useful thing that happened to it. On a current-limited bench supply the click was characterised without letting the drive run on, then it was opened under a laminar-flow hood and the head assembly and the platter surfaces went under a stereo microscope. Matched donor heads were fitted and the alignment set, and imaging ran on DeepSpar behind PC-3000 UDMA in controlled passes. The photographs were located in R-Studio and rendered rather than counted, so that what came back was known to open.
Heads replaced in filtered air, the drive read out to an image, and the photographs handed back on fresh media — thousands of them, none the worse for the fall. The diagnostic cost nothing, and the figure that followed was fixed, written and inclusive of VAT. Opening the drive meant matched donor parts and clean-air bench hours, so half the figure was settled before that stage and the remainder only once the pictures were proven back. Under magnification the surfaces were clean, which is what an unplugged drive normally looks like and what a repeatedly retried one normally does not.
Do not let the modest height talk you out of taking it seriously. Read heads ride nanometres above the platter, so a fall from a bed to the floor is a very large event indeed at the scale the drive works at, and the clicking is the confirmation that it landed badly. The instinct now is to keep plugging it in to see whether it will catch — resist it, because every attempt drags damaged heads across the surfaces the photographs are recorded on and turns a full recovery into a partial one. Leave it unplugged, keep it somewhere it will not get knocked again, and have it opened in clean air with matched donor heads. If the photographs matter, that hour of patience is worth more than anything else you could do.
Every case file here is written up from a real enquiry handled for households and businesses across Norwich and Norfolk, anonymised so that nobody is identifiable. Each sets out the reasoning behind the diagnosis and the method used on that particular fault, with the equipment named.
The noise is the diagnosis — heads that can no longer read, and every retry costs you surface
He had already worked it out — a clicking drive has no way of announcing itself, so Windows is shown nothing whatever
The shutdown is the drive admitting defeat — it cannot ready its heads, so it stops trying and steps back
Diagnosis costs nothing and takes up to 2 working days from arrival, the quote is fixed in writing, and logical work runs no fix, no fee — start online or ring the freephone.