Help with a HDD issue..

[gstevens26]

Hi guys.

I'm new to the forum and was hoping someone on here could help me with an issue i'm having with a Toshiba hard drive.
My friends laptop has stopped booting and on further investigation it would seem the hdd isn't being detected by the BIOS.
I connected the drive to my desktop using a sata cable and it is picking it fine although I am unable to access the partition containing the windows installation via windows explorer as I get a parameter error. The recovery partition is accessible fine. I have however managed to access the windows partition using testdisk...
I tried putting sata hdd from my laptop into my friends laptop to test if the BIOS recognised it and it was successful. I also put the problem hdd into my laptop to see if it was detected and it was.. I'm really confused. I tried removing the CMOS battery from the laptop for about 30 minutes to reset the BIOS but still no joy..

Please help if you can as i'm tearing my hair out with it..

Many thanks

[gstevens26]

The hard drive is detected in my laptop but is no longer detected by the laptop it was taken from..

[Vulcan]

This is normal with some kinds of drive fault, and some BIOS - seen it before. Your laptop (where the "problem" drive is detected) is not the same make, model & BIOS version as your friend's (where the "problem" drive is not detected), is it?

I expect that the "problem" drive does really have a fault. Further diagnosis would be needed to confirm or deny this, but diagnosis also has its risks! Your choices from this point includes the suggestions from Spildit and other alternatives, depending on the risks which your friend allows you to take with his/her data (considering that your actions could result in permanent loss of their data, depending on various factors including just luck, as well as your skill / experience).

Last edited by Vulcan on July 3rd, 2013, 15:45, edited 1 time in total.