Dropped an external hard drive on the ground... now what?

[Xellos2099]

Let me keep the story short, my friend's relative dropped her external hard drive and now it is not working and he is asking me what are the choice. I could open up the case to see if it is the hard drive that is damaged or the external casing, if it is just the case or power, i can just take out the drive and put it in a pc to extract the data or am i better off suggesting to take the drive to those data recovery place?

 

[bruceb]

Odds are the actual drive is messed up. They are not intended to be dropped, especially if it is onto a hard surface. I would advise opening the case and trying to access the drive externally. If you can get the data, fine. It would be very costly to use a data recovery place.

 

[nanaki333]

is it powering up? do you hear the click of death at all?