Hard drive dropped but still works-still reliable?

[drjeff]

My motherboard died on my desktop computer. I bought a new motherboard and new copy of windows. I was in the process of removing important files from the desktop's Seagate hard drive using a SATA/USB adapter when the drive fell about 2 feet off my night table and hit a carpeted floor while it was running.

The drive still seems to work and I can still access all the files. Is a drive that falls like that still reliable? I want to put it back in the old case and install Win 7 on it. Will it fail earlier?

[Midknyte]

Hard to say. Did you run the Seatools diagnostics on it?

[drjeff]

Hard to say. Did you run the Seatools diagnostics on it?

Didn't know it existed. Downloading now and will post the results. Thanks.

[drjeff]

I performed all of the Basic Tests that are part of Seagates's SeaTools for Windows utility. This included the long generic test that took well over an hour. The drive passed all the tests.

Included with the utility are "advanced tests" that carry the warning of possibility affecting data. This is not an issue with this drive which is destined for a reformat and Win 7 re-install. Do I need to run those as well?

[Midknyte]

Not really. The long test should be sufficient.

[drjeff]

Thanks for all the help.

[SuperSparks]

As long as the shock didn't cause a head crash, where the heads scrape against the platters (and the long test would have picked up the bad sectors caused by that), then it should be OK. Hard drives are really quite robust, and a fall of that distance onto carpet should be well within the G force range that a drive can withstand as long as the head crash didn't happen. I'd be quite happy to continue using it since it has passed the diagnostics.