Is the HDD dead?

[Pansysk75]

Sooo my brother had some trouble with his laptop recently, and it would not boot into windows ( there's also an issue with the screen, but we'll set it aside for now ).

I managed to get windows 7 on my thumb drive, but for some reason, when I install windows, it will not detect the hard drive. Also, I can't find it anywhere in the bios boot priority thingy...

So, to come to a conclusion, is the hard drive dead? How can I test it then? By the way, I do have a desktop, but the bas**rd who made it for me did not give me any extra cables.

Any help is appreciated.

[TheKDub]

Can you feel any vibration or hear anything coming from the hard drive when you turn on the laptop?

[antoainb]

Might be an issiue with the connector on the laptop, do other drives work on it?

[Clyne]

Try to test another hard drive if it's the computer fault or hard drive fault.

[Fred Castellum]

Can you feel any vibration or hear anything coming from the hard drive when you turn on the laptop?

^ Basically this, see if you can feel a vibration from the hard drive to confirm that its moving when on. 

 

Go into the bios and see if its detected. 

[Pansysk75]

Can you feel any vibration or hear anything coming from the hard drive when you turn on the laptop?

Only thing I can hear when I put my ear on it is the sound the fan makes. I can feel some vibration, but I'm not sure if it's from the fan or the hard drive.

[Pansysk75]

Try to test another hard drive if it's the computer fault or hard drive fault.

I can't quite do that, the hard drive is too small and I don't think I have anything that will fit in its place.

[TheKDub]

Only thing I can hear when I put my ear on it is the sound the fan makes. I can feel some vibration, but I'm not sure if it's from the fan or the hard drive.

 

Take off the bottom of the laptop as much as needed to access the hard drive, make sure it is plugged in completely, put a few fingers or your hand on the hard drive while leaving it plugged in and start the laptop, if you feel vibration coming from it then it most likely is not dead.

 

Also check the bios to see if it is recognized.

[Clyne]

It could be the graphics card fault because you said there was a problem with the screen.

[Pansysk75]

Take off the bottom of the laptop as much as needed to access the hard drive, make sure it is plugged in completely, put a few fingers or your hand on the hard drive while leaving it plugged in and start the laptop, if you feel vibration coming from it then it most likely is not dead.

Also check the bios to see if it is recognized.

I can't notice anything in particular. I'm almost certain it's not recognized in the bios.

[Pansysk75]

It could be the graphics card fault because you said there was a problem with the screen.

We managed to bypass that by plugging in another screen on the VGA port the laptop has. So I don't think it's that.

[Pansysk75]

Holy sheet it is working! Turns out it was the laptop's connectors or something. I connected the drive on my main PC and it works just fine! Well, at least I got 500 more gigs of storage....

Anyway thanks, this forum rocks!