How to recover folder names on a damaged HDD?

Question

Hard disks

I broke my HDD :(
There were a lot of packs with samples and other material stored on the disk. I don’t need to recover the data so much, I just want to look at the names of the folders that were there, because there are a lot of them, but I remember no more than 5-6 from memory.
Maybe some "snapshot" of a previously connected disk is saved in windows, where you can see the folder hierarchy? Because the system itself does not see the disk at all. Or is the only way to carry it to the SC?

Answer 1

If by "smashed" you mean a physical fall, then think twice before connecting the drive to your computer, not to mention using data recovery programs.
It depends on the state of the heads, but in general, the chances of worsening the situation are quite high, because. The OS "does not know" that the disk is in trouble and will try to work with it normally.
As a result, the appearance of a file (which may already be present, for example, if the disk was turned on during a fall), making data recovery impossible in principle.

Answer 2

In case of damage to the heads, you need to transplant the HDD pancakes to the donor disk, and from there, perform the recovery.
In any case, you can only ruin the data on your own. So it is better to contact data recovery companies.