Read this before you do anything else
Don't power it on to see if it survived. That test is the risk.
The instinct after a drop is to plug it in and check. On a drive with spinning platters, that check is the most dangerous single action available: if the heads were displaced or the mechanics knocked out of alignment, powering on drives them across the surface holding your files. A drive that was survivable while switched off becomes a head-crash while you watch the progress bar. Whether it was running at the moment of impact matters enormously, and either way the answer comes from inspection, not from another attempt.
Emergency
Dropped CCTV recorder
If your CCTV recorder has been dropped, the most useful thing on this page is above this paragraph, and it is free. What follows is what the fault usually turns out to be, how recoverable this class of failure is, and what it would cost, including the cases we would tell you to take elsewhere.
What this usually turns out to be
Recorders are usually knocked down rather than dropped, coming off a shelf or out of a ceiling mount, and like a NAS they are almost always running when it happens. The drive inside is a standard hard drive spinning at the moment of impact, so head contact is a genuine possibility. What makes this different from the same event on a computer is that the recorder carries on recording afterwards if it still can, writing new footage over old on a surface that may now be damaged.
Recorders write in a manufacturer's own format and loop over the oldest footage continuously. The clock on a CCTV job is retention, not hardware.
Head assembly displaced or damaged
The likeliest serious outcome when a drive is dropped while running. Powering on afterwards is what turns it into surface damage.
Platter damage from head contact at impact
Where the heads struck the surface during the fall, leaving scoring already present before any power-up.
Nothing at allbetter news
Drives are designed to survive substantial shock while parked and idle. A drop onto carpet while switched off very often does no damage whatsoever.
Cracked solder joint or connector damagebetter news
Common on USB sticks and phones, where the impact is taken by the connector rather than any storage. The memory itself is usually intact.
What to check first on a CCTV recorder
- Stop recording through the unit's menu, or power it down if it is making any unusual noise.
- Establish whether it was recording at the time of the fall.
- Work out the retention window and the incident date before restarting anything.
What not to do
Do not leave it running to see whether it keeps working. If the heads touched the platter, continued recording both damages the surface further and overwrites the footage you need. Do not let it format or repair the disk when it complains.
How recoverable this is
Governed almost entirely by one question: was it running when it fell? A parked, powered-off drive dropped a short distance frequently survives with nothing wrong at all. A drive dropped while spinning is the harder case, and it gets harder every time it is powered on afterwards. Flash devices and phones fare much better: with no moving parts, a drop usually damages the connector or the board rather than the storage.
What moves it, for your device specifically:
- Whether the device was powered on and spinning at the moment of impact
- Whether the impact displaced the heads or damaged the platter surface
- How many times it has been powered on since
We will not give you a percentage for your device, and you should be wary of anyone who does. Nobody can know what is recoverable until the media has been imaged and read. What is above describes this class of failure; your drive gets its own answer after an assessment, in writing, at no cost.
What it costs
Assessed free, then referred at no charge
Cleanroom mechanical work
Clicking, seized or head-crashed drives need internal mechanical work in a controlled environment. We don't have one, so we assess it, tell you what we found in writing, and refer it on. That referral costs you nothing here.
Nothing is charged until you have seen a fixed quote for your actual device and agreed to it, and the assessment that produces it is free.
Other faults on a CCTV recorder
Dropped or knocked on other devices
Next step
Tell us what failed.
Free assessment. Fixed quote before recovery starts. No recovery, no fee. Sydney drop-off or Australia-wide by tracked post.