I'm just going to go into a corner and cry
Nosiferret
Posts: 339
6 years of files stored on a external HD, all my DAZ stuff downloaded to it, prior years of backed up files older than 6 years...gone. My headphones being the culprit, they fell off the top of the computer twice. The 2nd time they managed to wrap themselves around my HD and take it down to the floor with them. All gone in two seconds. HD won't light up, it's toast. Along with years of renders, WIP's, hours spent converting poses...I'm sure I used the drive to save pics of pets who have passed on....BAM, gone. *rubbing snotty nose sound* 2020 can kiss my---
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It's a very, very, very slim chance, but are you sure the drive itself is actually broken and hasn't just become disconnected from the connectors in the HDD enclosure. Try taking the drive out of the case and plugging it directly into the computer before chucking it on the off-chance it's the case that's broken and not the drive.
There's also tons of videos about fixing a broken drive and what to check for, first.
All hope is far from lost.
The odds are very striong that little if any data is actually lost.
You should definitely open the enclosure in case it just came loose, I wouldn't be shocked if this is a problem.
If there is nothing obvious wrong you can, if it is worth it to you, find a data recovery service. Data recovery can usually recover all but a few sectors from drives that have failed but have no physical damage, I know HDD's have been recovered after fires and car accidents.
Also if you have things you don't want to lose backup your data! Put stuff in DroBox, or OneDrive, if you don't have too much data if you do there are other options you should investigate.
You can also get a cheap enclosure off Amazon or something and try putting the drive into that to see if it will boot back up. Far cheaper than data recovery if it works. They're only like 20-40 bucks.
Oh man, that's awful! :( I'm sorry that happened - what a bad luck incident! I hope that you take the advice of some of the comments here and try to get it working or get the data recovered before giving up. It's very likely that the files can be retrieved.
I dropped a hard drive from waist height, ironically while I was moving it to a box to mirror it with RAID1. It cost me $1800, but I got almost all of the 6 gigs back. If the drive had not been reading/writing before the trauma occurred, the heads were probably parked and didn't cause any damage.
At least talk to a recovery service... I suspect that mine "saw me coming".
It depends on what was required. If the drive needed the sweeper arm replaced or something else calling for opening the platter compartment then it is expensive. The work has to be done in a clean environment by techs trained in very precise work.
If you won't back up your data, or forget frequently, I strongly suggest spending the extra money on Seagate Ironwolf Pro drives. They have data recovery as part of their 5 year warranty.
As long as you dont overwrite the data, there should be recovery methods you can use. As others have said, it could be expensive though depending on what the problem is.
I'll say it again, backup your damn files.
... This is aimed at those who don't bother. It's too late for the OP sadly. Best case scenario for the OP: time and cash will recover all the files. That's best case, in any event, time and/or money will be spent.
I could argue the dark outcome and suggest that you actually are royally screwed, all hope is lost, and the world is coming to an end.
However, unless you make attempts to verify the woefulness of it all, you'll never know if it could have been rectified. It's entirely possible that the issue lies with the electronics of the external harddrive case itself and not with the harddrive. Or, possibly if the falling hard drive yanked on the cable connecting it to the computer and losened or broke a connection Once you've eliminated computer port, cable, external case, and powersupply, then you can worry about the harddrive itself. 
Direct your worry, in productive directions.
Not to throw sand on the fire, but some commercial external hard drives are not intended to be opened by the consumer and once you get them open (sometimes by breaking case parts), you may find that the harddrive itself isn't your off-the-shelf drive that will just work by plugging it into a new empty drive case or internally in a computer. because some drives expect a slightly different pin configuration to run, the difference is trivial (like one pin needs to be shorted or something) and I've seen a few discussions on YouTube but I don't know it well enough to describe it here now. Just be aware that pulling a harddrive from a commercial case can require a little force to get it open, and a little knowlege to get the drive to work in a standalone case or connected internally to a computer. However, many drives can be trivially moved from an external case to another or used as an internal drive. But there are exceptions. Point being, don't give up early. Go to a knowlegable person or computer fix-it place for a second opinion, if necessary.
Edited to add: Here's a couple of links discussing what I mean about minorly different pin-out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24bS7a6rPoQ (relevant point beginning at 5:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YqMn1pCRd8 (whole video discussing the topic)
Just adding my +1 to chose who suggest unboxing the drive and trying it in a new enclosure. Until you know that the drive itself is broken, don't give up hope (and even then, a data recovery service might be able to get some of your data back, at a price).
You could consider buying a drive dock, rather than an enclosure. A dock, which you can find at places like Newegg for not-very-much-money, is just an open-topped box into which you can drop a bare hard drive. You probably don't want to run a drive permanently in a dock -- if your drive does turn out to be recoverable, buy it a new enclosure -- but docks are handy to have around. For one thing, you can buy another bare drive, drop it into the dock, use it to make a backup of your drive, and then take it out of the dock and put it away in a closet. Or at a friend's house ten miles away, so that even if your house catches fire, you don't lose your data.
And +100 to everyone who says "make a backup". Make a backup. Make a backup of your backup. Make an online backup of the really irreplaceable stuff. Storage, even online storage, is stupid cheap these days.
That sounds about right. Redundancy.
You may not get everything back but there are services and hardware to salvage information off harddrives. It may cost a bit but certainly worth it.
Oh that was painful.
First do not do what is described in that second video. If you get a drive like this, and for some unknown reason your PSU actually does power the 3.3v pin don't start modding the drive or putting tape over pins.
Get a Molex to SATA adapter, costs less than $5 on Amazon and Newegg. Molex doesn't have 3.3V at all so it can not enable the reset loop. However it has been literally years since I've encountered a HDD spec sheet that called for 3.3v.
Finally if you ever disassemble electronics do not use a pocket knife. Get a decent iFixIt kit. There is a $20 to $30 kit that has basic opening tools and a driver with a reasonable number of bits for common devices. the iFixIt website also has detailed disassembly instructions, with videos, for most home electronics and cell phones.
Some HDDs can stand quite a bit of physical torture. An 13+ year old quote from WDs website:
"How tough is it? Our newly launched WD Scorpio 2.5-inch EIDE drives
were performance-tested continuously over four days while they were
shaken and struck with a hammer every ten seconds - more than 34,000
times."
How big that hammer was they didn't say though.
I had one hard drive that was not working and just making a clicking sound for a long time. Maybe for more than a month. But I kept trying it. One day it just worked. And I copied everything that day.
Thanks all! Lots of ideas and encouragement. I will see what I can do :)
Good luck!
With storage being so cheap, backups are good, although I mostly do this with non-Daz store stuff.
With Daz's library, I can just call it back up with DIM, mostly. I tend not to worry about backups for the Daz stuff, for laziness' sake.
"Maxwell's Silver Hammer"?
..when my LIbrary drive xrached a couple years ago, I did takeit to a specialist for recovery even though I knew it could be expensive.
The main reason I back all my stuff up to multiple drives. I've lost data way too many times, so I feel your pain. Hopefully you can recover it.
Laurie
Good news. Brother worked in IT area and he managed to get the drive out of the hard case. Wasn't easy, he said breaking the case could damage the drive since the case survived the 3 foot drop from before. We hooked it up to a bay in the computer and tah-dah the computer is registering it and it looks like everything is showing up. So lucky! But I did get another drive today so now I have a 4TB hooked up, so I think I might be moving DAZ to the 4TB. I was in the market for one anyway because my DAZ folder is getting way out of hand size wise, this situation made me get off the fence and get it done.
Regarding the DAZ stuff Should I copy everything over to the new drive? Or just do a new reinstall everything to the new drive which would make it a clean install. Strictly use the new drive for DAZ. Now I have to remember what I did to make the IM register the external drive.
Thank you so much to everyone who answered with suggestions and support and fingers crossed for me :) I figured you all would really understand and "feel the pain" I was in compared to my other friends who were just like "ouch" LOL
Huzzah! Such a relief when that happens and all is well. Now...lets hope MINE will do that. Hubby dropped mine the same way but it wouldn't come back. It's sitting waiting patiently for me to send it out and see if it's recoverable plus pay the ransom.
Well... derrr. You should have everything backed up to at least one other drive unless you want the same thing happening again. Back up your instalation files and if possible also have your DS library backed up externally too.
Generally speaking you don't back up easily replaceable files. Daz store assets should be available for DL so backing up would not generally be worth the time, effort and cost. However I vaguely recall mention of assets being removed for some reason and no longer being available for dl even to people who own the asset. If that is the case then yes backing up Daz store material is advised.
That's why I have one 2TB drive just for backup. When it gets full I delete it and Window 10 (via the old Windows 7 backup program) does a full backup again. I make sure that the Windows 7 backup creates a 'systen image' and I leave it then and it takes about 6 months for a 2TB drive to fill up because Windows 7 Backup does incrementals after the initial backup.
When I add an NVMe M.2 2TB drive only for system programs and split that off the 2TB Sata III SSD everything is on now, then I will buy a 2nd 2TB drive for another backup drive for the NVMe drive.
Then finally my disks space problems will be solved (I like to have 50% or more free on each disk drive I use).
I think for simplicity's sake I prefer a full backup weekly and then to wipe that backup out just before the new backup for the next week runs. I only run a backup once a week on Sunday.
Especially with SSD's that get written to frequently because it's the writting that wears out the storage cells. People who do mass amounts of video operations and editing can eat into their available free space.
Also.. test your back ups.. !