Tapping Or Banging A Drive

Anyone searching the Internet will find self-proclaimed data recovery procedures. These outrageous clams such as tapping the side of the hard drive with a screwdriver can damage the drive further making any recovery attempt futile. We at Northwest Data Recovery hope that this explanation will help to better understand why tapping or banging the drive could damage it further. The theory behind this myth is the actuator has become stuck and tapping or banging the drive will allow it to become free to access the stored data. Because of the tolerances’ within today’s hard drives when the drive is struck it could drive the heads into the platters causing devastating damage to the drive. To show what type of damage can happen we have taken a known good drive and tapped the drive in the same manner described on one of the many forums on the internet. ( place image scratched platter). As you can see the drive has developed a scratch on the platters. The heads have dove into the platters causing the drive unrecoverable.