my externall hdd was hooked up at my buddy's house and he moved the thing it was sitting on and it fell to the ground because it has a short power cable. i dismounted it in windows and turned it off. when i turned it back on it was clicking and the computer couldnt find it. all my data is gone i guess? save opening it up and replacing the heads?
$500-$2000 to recover at a datacenter. It usually has nothing to do with the heads, the disk is likely physically scratched
ah ok, i guess i was never gonna watch the 42gb of top gear a second time anyway. i didnt lose anything super important like pictures or music, just tv movies and app installers.
many hard drives are under a 5 year warranty. You can get a free replacement (cost of shipping the bad unit back to them only) They won't recover your data, only ship you a new or refurbished drive. Check it out at the hard drive manufacturer's website. Chances are they won't notice or care that it is because it was dropped that it doesn't work.
or you could just take the hd out of the casing and plug it directly into your pc without the all the jazz the case and guts have, because it could be the problem. worked for me when i dropped mine
keep in mind that most drives will also say that they can handle up 300 Gs or so. i'm not sure if they have a little indicator inside. still always worth a try to get a new drive