So as the title says, I had just turned on my laptop, and not 2 minutes in, I hear a clicking noise coming from the laptop. I stopped to investigate, but found that while the internet had cut out (might be unrelated), I could still move between tabs. So I kept going, lifting the laptop, trying to figure out where the noise was coming from, etc. Eventually, it froze altogether, so I shut it down, and then when I booted it back up it said "no bootable device".

I'm sort of freaking out right now, as I do have some rather important files on that hard drive(nothing life ending - I back that sort of stuff up - but enough to make my life quite a pain). I'm hoping it's recoverable, or it's not a HDD issue in the first place, but from all I know about computers, it seems like it is.

Note: Yesterday I was messing around with Python trying to install some third party modules, and I had someone helping me change the PATH environment variable to recognize Python. This doesn't seem related, as I restarted my computer after doing so and had no issues, but seeing as I didn't really understand what I was doing, I thought I should mention it.

Thank you for any help.

Take the drive out of your laptop and try and run it with a desktop computer as a second drive. The operating system might have gotten corrupted somehow and this will test to see if the drive works.

Do you hear any strange sounds coming from the hard disk, noises that are not normal?

Shane

No unusual noises other than the aforementioned clicking noise.

To expand on that, the clicking noise kept a constant beat until the laptop was turned off. After being turned back on, the clicking noise starts again and persists for about 30 seconds or so before stopping.

Bios reveals that the computer does not recognized an HDD.

Thanks for the tip.

Sounds very much like a physical issue with the drive, so sadly not DIY

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Thank for the help :/

One more thing - a techy friend of mine (like, legitimate programmer for a profession, not random guy that says he knows computers) said that putting it in the freezer may get me about 30 minutes of time to copy files, as it may compress the metal parts enough to get them back in place for a time.

Is this true? Is there risk of other damage in trying it?

SO true. In Alaska in fact mechanics do not exist at all, people just leave cars outside for self repair

P.s. don't do it !

My wife, programmer extraordinaire no-doubt, freaks out if asked to swap a disk or change a CPU. You can be a legitimate programmer or other specialist, and know jack when it comes to disks. As evidenced by his suggestion. Disks are a specialty in and of themselves. So you need the opinion of a "disk specialist".

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On a clear disk you can seek forever.

Alright, I get the point. Thank you for you help.