A 1 TB WD 3.5-inch mechanical drive dropped around 2014 and never powered on again, containing irreplaceable family photographs. The motor had seized and the drive carried WD hardware encryption.
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The drive had been dropped roughly a decade before it reached us and had not been powered on since. That is unusual and it is entirely to the client's credit — a drive left alone after an impact is in far better condition than one that has been tried repeatedly in the hope it will work.
The contents were family photographs with no other copy in existence, which is the most common irreplaceable-data scenario we handle.
Two separate problems. The motor had seized and would not spin, and the drive carried WD's hardware encryption — meaning that even once readable, the platters would yield ciphertext rather than files.
The encryption is worth explaining because it surprises people. Several WD drives and enclosures encrypt transparently, without the owner ever setting a password or knowingly enabling anything. The key is held in the drive or bridge electronics, and recovering the sectors is only half the job.
The photographs were recovered and delivered to the client via cloud download.
Two things made this job work. The drive had not been powered since the impact, so no further mechanical damage had accumulated in ten years. And the encryption was addressed against the image, so the repaired drive was never asked to do more than be read once.
A drive that has not been powered since it failed does not deteriorate on a shelf. Magnetic media is stable in reasonable storage conditions.
Several WD drives and enclosures encrypt by default with no password and no prompt. Recovering the sectors and recovering the files are two separate problems.
A spindle that will not turn is a mechanical problem with the motor, not damage to the surfaces holding your data.