Possible WD My Passport drive failure? Any solution?

[gødspeed]

Hello,

I'm afraid that my Western Digital My Passport 2TB USB 3.0 drive may have just failed.

It was working until I dropped it from about 2 feet on a hardwood floor, and now it won't load up. The blue status light just flashes about twice per second, and when I first connect it it emits a short beep every 5 or so seconds for about a minute. I have tried an SMC reset on my MacBook, connecting it to other computers, freezing it for 15 minutes, etc. I've also tried "percussive maintenance", but that only caused it to click at about the same frequency as it had been beeping, until I unplugged it and reconnected it at which point it went back to beeping about twice a second.

It was formatted to exFAT. Data Rescue 3 does not even recognize it.

I am a filmmaker and I use this drive for archiving old footage. It's not as big of a disaster as losing my current projects would be, but this footage does still have a lot of value to me and my clients. I am not in a position to spend $1000+ on expert data recovery, though.

I know, I'm an idiot for not backing everything up. This is the first drive failure I've ever had. Please, any ideas?

 

[jav6454]

Dropped from 2 feet high unto hardwood floor? I'm afraid you may have scratched the magnetic surface and hence corrupted the drive. Also bear in mind, magnets tend to misalign their original magnetic state when a strong force is exerted on them, in this case a drop. This also leads to data corruption and drive failure.

 

[gødspeed]

Bollocks. Any methods for data recovery short of shelling out $1000+ to experts?

 

[gr8tfly]

I can't think of any options at this point, other than data recovery services.

I think you got the message already, so this is for others who haven't experienced the adrenaline rush yet: Backup backup backup. Clients or personal, 2x backups plus working copy is a minimum requirement IMO. Offsite and fire/flood protection should be considered too.