Internal flash drive laptop inaccessible

Izak · December 30, 2021

So I'm trying to get the files of a laptop that blue screened out of the blue (standing still on a table) and now refuses to boot. At this point I don't really care about using the laptop as a laptop anymore, I just want to get the files that are on it.

LAPTOP BACKGROUND

I bought this laptop new over two years ago. It was only used for basic tasks like web browsing, text editing and watching videos. It was a student laptop, meaning it did travel in around in backpacks and such, but it was never tossed around.
I found it on tweezers: https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/1420708/hp-14-dg0003nd/specificaties/

PROBLEM
it now refuses to boot telling me that the boot device is not found (3F0). When I try to run the harddisk diagnostics the tests (both options) do startup, but than redirect me to the main menu without performing the test or giving any indication of what happened.

I TRIED

Initially I tried opening the laptop up and taking out the hard drive. I was not aware it was a soldered on flash disk, rather than a SATA drive. I tried dusting it off and closing it back up. After this I was able to boot into windows again, for about 10 seconds. After which it blue screened and threw the same familiar 3F0 error when starting it up.

I tried making a Windows 10 bootable usb stick to see if it could detect the drive or undo the last windows update. It failed to do either. In the command prompt I when I tried to "cd D:" (or any other non existing drive letter) it would tell me that that drive did not exist, when trying "cd C:" however, it did not give any feedback, nor did it change the directory to the C drive. It seems to know it's there, but is unable to look into it.

I also tried making a bootable linux (mint) usb stick to see if I could access the drive from there. Using the file explorer I was not able to find the disk but when diving into the command line I was able to have the drive show up with a correct capacity, but still unable to change my directory into it.

If anyone has a tip on what to try next (hardware or software) to recover the files that would be great!

da na · December 30, 2021

Welcome to the forums!

Unfortunately it seems like your soldered chips, or their controller, has failed. At this point there is not much you can do to recover your data, if it will not recognize or mount booting from an external source. You could contact HP and see if they have any solutions but your data may just be gone.