Case file · Electrical damage · BDR-2025-0618
It Dropped Mid-Transfer and Pulled the USB Out.
The drive dropped off the desk and pulled the USB out
— while it was plugged in and transferring files
. Reconnected, it was not recognised
and had started making strange noises
. The owner sensed the timing mattered, and she was right to.
Same symptoms on your desk?
01273 964902
The decode.
A powered-down drive parks its heads off the platter surface entirely, which is why drops in transit are survivable far more often than people expect. A drive mid-transfer has its heads flying over the data at nanometre height with the actuator in motion. The same impact, in that state, lands exactly where it does most harm — and the drive's own protection has no time to act.
Equipment on this case.
How a case runs →| Platform | What it did here | Why this tool |
|---|---|---|
| DeepSpar Disk Imager 4 | Head map first, then imaging strictly ordered by head condition | Head-map-aware imaging with per-head timeout, reset and power-cycle control |
| PC-3000 Data Extractor | Handled the read passes with power-cycle recovery between stalls | The imaging half of the PC-3000 platform, driven by the firmware half |
| R-Studio Technician | Rebuilt the filesystem from the image and recovered the interrupted transfer's files | Broad filesystem coverage and dependable RAID reconstruction |
On the bench.
Read the damage pattern before touching anything
Head slider inspection showed the asymmetric damage typical of an impact taken while flying — not uniform wear, but concentrated harm to specific heads. The platters showed light contact marks in a band, consistent with the actuator being driven into the surface, and crucially not the deep circular scoring that ends a case.
Donor heads, then map, then order the passes
A matched donor head stack went in and a head map was built. The surviving-surface picture guided everything after: healthy heads imaged first at speed, the damaged band approached last with slow transfer rates and controlled resets between stalls.
Treat the impact zone as the fragile thing it is
The region under the head at the moment of the fall — identifiable from the damage geography — was imaged last and gently. It gave up most of its content with patience. No test mounts were performed at any stage; the platters were asked for exactly one careful read.
The outcome.
The recovery ran near-complete, with the impact band the only meaningful loss. The files that had been mid-copy that day were re-copied from the image, this time without gravity's involvement.
Related on the index.
More from Electrical damage.
Recognise your own drive in this story?
Same rule as every case above: power it down, and let the diagnosis be free before any decision has to be.