Claremont, Ontario, Canada. At least every week we receive a few recoveries where the drive will not spin up. The problem is a physical issue where the spindle motor that spins the hard drive’s platters is seized.  The cost of recovering from such a situation is quite expensive, but it may be possible to avoid such a dilemma.

Manufactures design external enclosures that mount the drive either vertically or horizontally as shown in the picture below. Due to the high centre of gravity with the vertical units, they are extremely susceptible to being knocked over, which in turn may cause your hard drive’s spindle to seize. Avoid buying one of these vertically mounted external hard drive enclosure if at all possible.

                           Vertically mounted  (SUV)                   Horizontally mounted (Porsche)

While it’s true hard drives are designed to be mounted either vertically or horizontally, they are not designed to withstand much shock while operating.  Approximately 10 years ago when hard drives were still designed with standard ball bearings in their spindle motors, they rarely seized. But in the quest for better performance, drives began using fluid dynamic bearings. With FD bearings,  the metal balls were replaced with a layer of liquid. While there is no doubt that these bearings were superior in performance, they do have the disadvantage that under shock situations the fluid dynamic bearings can catastrophically seize. And that is what we are seeing so much of today. http://www.memofixdatarecovery.com/data-recovery-hard-drive.php  … David Foster