recovering data from damaged HD?

[gldelx]

anyone have experience with getting data off a damaged HD?
I 'had' an external HD used for my MBP backups and all my photo & media data that fell from an end table onto the hardwood floor. When the power cord was plugged back into the wall, you could hear a definite wobble in the drive and was not recognized by the MBP. I immediately unplugged it and noticed when you move the enclosure you can hear a slight clunk when moving from side to side.
I tore the enclosure apart and hope to be able to have someone pull the data off the disk itself. Anyone have experience having data recovered from drives with physical damage?

 

[ayeying]

if the platters aren't scratched, you can probably recover the data from data recovery companies. If they are, you're out of luck.

 

[dilbert4life]

if the platters aren't scratched, you can probably recover the data from data recovery companies. If they are, you're out of luck.

He is correct.

Sometimes, however, I have had luck just hooking the external up to a separate computer altogether. Not sure why, but it does work sometimes.

That being said, if your drive without a doubt has physical damage, I would stop moving it around ASAP, and start making some phone calls to data recovery businesses.