Hi, when your device appears in Device Manager, it means that your PC recognizes that the device is connected. However, for disks, the next and more critical step is that it should display correctly in Disk Management. The fact that it shows as uninitialized suggests that your PC cannot read the disk's partition structure. The error message about a hardware problem when attempting to initialize the disk indicates a physical issue with the disk rather than a software problem. Additionally, the clicking sounds coming from the hard drive are a very bad sign, suggesting that the read/write head may have been damaged due to the fall. All components in hard drives are extremely sensitive to any physical damage. What may seem like a small distance to us can be critically damaging to a hard drive. You can contact a professional data recovery center to retrieve your files, as it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to perform the necessary repairs at home.
⚠️ I’d also like to note something that might be useful to someone in the future. Generally, hard drives should withstand such a fall, but there’s a catch—if you remove the drive from the PC without safely ejecting it, the read/write head might not be in its proper position. Instead, it could be in the middle of a read/write operation and hovering over the magnetic platters, making the drive even more vulnerable to damage.
P.S. I don’t think your 30-day warranty will help in this case, as it doesn’t seem to be a factory defect but rather physical damage caused by the fall, even if it wasn’t from a great height. 😢
