sony external harddrive fell from 2 feet on tiled floor

[Yash21]

Lights were off and unrealised i lifted the laptop to which the hdd was connected and then i realised it was. By that point it was almost in the air and then i tried to not let it fall and also i partially it held for a fraction of a second and the it disconnected from the usb cable and fell. I plugged it in and it worked normally, my question is has there been some damage or will it start to get damaged as i use it or it will stop suddenly after sometime and if it has taken damage is there a way to know it? And it has a lot of very important data.

 

[Shmee]

If it works currently, you can check for any SMART errors by using something like crystaldiskinfo, assuming it supports SMART. If Sony has a diagnostic program for it, you could also use that.

That said, I would make an additional backup of any important data on there at this point, especially if that is the only location said data is stored. You may want to invest in another backup drive or 2.

 

[damian101]

You could scan the drive for bad sectors. I can recommend DiskGenius for that.
I once damaged a hard drive in a similar way, lots dead sectors at the beginning of the drive. I just left the damaged part unpartitioned and now it works without problems again.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Backup / make a 2nd-copy of anything important on that drive. IMMEDIATELY. Then do a surface scan, scan for errors. If there is physical (platter, head, other) damage, doing the scan before the backup may hose the drive more.

 

[SamirD]

Backup / make a 2nd-copy of anything important on that drive. IMMEDIATELY. Then do a surface scan, scan for errors. If there is physical (platter, head, other) damage, doing the scan before the backup may hose the drive more.

THIS. Do not expect this drive to work normally or for you to not lose your data--copy it to a backup immediately.

 

[UsandThem]

And it has a lot of very important data.

That said, I would make an additional backup of any important data on there at this point, especially if that is the only location said data is stored. You may want to invest in another backup drive or 2.

If you have "very important data" you don't want to lose, always maintain at least one backup. A local backup and cloud-based backup is even better.

Otherwise, you are at the complete mercy of an accident/drive failure wiping it all out.

Edit: I just saw this was posted over at Tom's as well: https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...rive-fell-from-2-feet-on-tiled-floor.3645686/



For example, the point of having a backup is not dropping a drive and worry about damaging/destroying it, and losing all of your data that you can't afford to lose.

 

[Steltek]

If the data is less than 5 gigabytes total, you can encrypt it and upload a copy to a free Microsoft Onedrive or Google Drive account as a secondary backup.

Do not trust single USB external drives for backup. The ones sold these days (even when not dropped) tend to be cheaply made crap that will die a horrible death at the slightest provocation. Data recovery is often not possible when this happens, and even when it is it may be a very expensive proposition. Definitely not worth taking a chance on for sure.

 

[SamirD]

The 3-2-1 rule is the best. And even better when you do all the 3 steps in multiples.

 

[Yash21]

well then i suppose there's not much sense in buying a larger capacity hdd and piling data in it

 

[SamirD]

well then i suppose there's not much sense in buying a larger capacity hdd and piling data in it

There is if you buy 3x of them and make 2x of them backups, one off site.

 

[mikeford]

well then i suppose there's not much sense in buying a larger capacity hdd and piling data in it

Its not the size of the drive, its the need for backup on any important data.

You may not realize how cheap redundant drives and mirror storage are until you have a problem and start looking at recovery costs.

 

[SamirD]

You may not realize how cheap redundant drives and mirror storage are until you have a problem and start looking at recovery costs.

This is the big one. And it's why raid systems exist--not as backup, but to keep downtime to near zero, which is important in situations when downtime is money.

 

[kschendel]

... And it has a lot of very important data.

I realize this is piling on, but it needs emphasizing: if the data on that drive is important, it must be backed up. Not just when you're afraid the drive might break - all the time!

"Only back up the data you care about."

"Backups are useless until you need them. Then they're priceless."

"If you don't back it up, it must not be very important."

"Murphy: the chances of a drive failure are directly proportional to the value of the data on the drive, times the length of time since the previous backup."

 

[Yash21]

I just successfully recovered all the data from the drive. I then ran the windows chkdsk and it showed out to be completely ok, was quite surprised. Though when i was copying the data, some portion of the data copied really slowly even on a 3.0 port, could have been around 20 percent or so. Here is the screenshot. Is there anything else i could do to check for the drive's integrity or for the bad sectors as it becomes pretty evident that it is still usable for usual data transfer and what else should i do?

 

[UsandThem]

Is there anything else i could do to check for the drive's integrity or for the bad sectors as it becomes pretty evident that it is still usable for usual data transfer and what else should i do?

Nope, it sounds like you have all your bases covered.

 

[Shmee]

I would still check the SMART data, if drive supports it.

 

[SamirD]

I would make sure you have a complete backup and it is compared with the original using windiff to make sure you have every bit off of there.

Next I would boot a parted magic livecd and then run the short and long smart tests and see what results you get. I bet it will pass the short and fail the long.

 

[Yash21]

I would still check the SMART data, if drive supports it.

Ran both the smart tests; the short one and the extended one. On completion, it said completed without any errors on both tests. Here is the report. I also ran a test for verfiying disk sectors which completed without any bad sectors. Here are the snaps. I dont understand what these fully mean, so posting these for better understanding and insight. So, whats the outlook then for the drive. Is there still anything that i should do? Or is it done now. And are these results a bit better than expected. And thanks for all the support from all of you guys.

 

[mikeford]

I'd treat it like a patched tire, fine for everyday use, but maybe not track days. There are plenty of "working" tasks, where the penalty for losing data is close to nothing.

 

[SamirD]

I'd treat it like a patched tire, fine for everyday use, but maybe not track days. There are plenty of "working" tasks, where the penalty for losing data is close to nothing.

This is what I would do too.

Those results are quite interesting, indicating no apparent damage. Boot up a parted magic live cd and run the long smart test there. If it passes that, then it's a pretty great drive to have survived that.