Hard drive is no longer being recognised.

Lockstep

My laptop is acting up: the hard drive is no longer being recognized. This just came out of nowhere.

Trying to turn the laptop on has me being asked to add a booting system, BIOS doesn't help either (it doesn't see the hard drive as being part of it) whereas trying to reinstall Windows is no help as it doesn't see a hard drive to be copied from.

Anyone able to give any suggestions as to where to start?

bette

Lockstep wrote: »

My laptop is acting up: the hard drive is no longer being recognized. This just came out of nowhere.

Trying to turn the laptop on has me being asked to add a booting system, BIOS doesn't help either (it doesn't see the hard drive as being part of it) whereas trying to reinstall Windows is no help as it doesn't see a hard drive to be copied from.

Anyone able to give any suggestions as to where to start?

Your disk might be damaged if it's not showing up in the BIOS. You should specify what make and model your machine is.

If the disk is fubar then you cannot install to it so my suggestion is to replace it and install the system afresh from your Windows install disk. You will have the serial number stuck to the laptop, sometimes underneath and in the case of Dell it may be found inside the battery compartment.

If you are installing a new system you should have the machine on mains so you may remove the battery. You will need to download the drivers for the various components; sound, graphics, network etc. from the manufacturer's site.

Once you install the system and then the drivers you are good to go. At this point you might try to see if your old disk is usable. Perhaps you have a friend
with a desktop/tower who can let you hitch up the disk to his machine in the hope that it might be readable. If it is you can copy t he stuff to another medium, USB stick, CD od DVD. I would not recommend trying to get some life out of your old disk now as the more you spin it the greater the risk of getting it further damaged.

A new disk will cost you circa €50 and you can order online here for instance.

So;

• Identify make and model
• Order disk (if it's a newish machine you are looking for a 2.5" SATA)
• Download drivers from manufacturer's site
• Install System and drivers.
• If possible, hitch up the old disk into a desktop or tower in the hope that it may be read and data copied.

polyfusion

First thing I would do would be to burn a live-cd like knoppix, and back-up any important data from the hard drive, if the live-cd os can see the hard-drive of course.

Lockstep

Installed Linux Mint onto a flashdrive which allows the computer to run, data on hard drive still can't be read though.

is it recoverable?

bette

Lockstep wrote: »

Installed Linux Mint onto a flashdrive which allows the computer to run, data on hard drive still can't be read though.

is it recoverable?

I doubt it. Why not do the sensible thing and replace the disk. What make and model is your laptop? That's where you start. You will get a plethora of foolish suggestions, spend hours fooling around and tampering and simply get bogged down deeper.

You should also consider an external drive for backups. It looks like your disk is beyond repair but there is always hope that something might be recoverable. You won't do that by tampering with a dodgy drive.

k123456

Try reseating the HDD, and or there may be a HDD test in your Bios. Does however sound like the HDD is gone

If you have another desktop with a sata cd drive, hook your laptop drive to the sata cable, you may be able to copy your data off your laptop HDD

bette

k123456 wrote: »

Try reseating the HDD, and or there may be a HDD test in your Bios. Does however sound like the HDD is gone

If you have another desktop with a sata cd drive, hook your laptop drive to the sata cable, you may be able to copy your data off your laptop HDD

See post #2!

The OP will have to check if his/her machine has a SATA or IDE drive. That is why we ask for the make and model. If it is an old machine it may have an IDE drive and will beed a converter...

Lockstep

It's a SATA drive, laptop is an Asus F5SL. Ordered a replacement drive off Komplett so my main worry is trying to recover whatever I can. I took the hard-drive out of my friends netbook and my laptop worked fine, likewise when we tried putting the Asusdrive into his netbook it didn't work.

I have an external hard drive if it helps.

tmcw

EDIT: My original post is pretty much redundant, after the posts that went up since I began posting.

bette

Lockstep wrote: »

It's a SATA drive, laptop is an Asus F5SL. Ordered a replacement drive off Komplett so my main worry is trying to recover whatever I can. I took the hard-drive out of my friends netbook and my laptop worked fine, likewise when we tried putting the Asusdrive into his netbook it didn't work.

I have an external hard drive if it helps.

Now you have to be patient until the new disk arrives. In the meantime you might have a friend who could hitch up the bad disk for you. Pity you are on the other side of the country. I usually have a machine open...

At least you know what the problem is.