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Is my laptop hard drive dead and gone forever?

A

aeroguy

Senior member
Have a Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop, about 5 years old.

I'm on travel, but my wife reported that the computer started making clicking noises (I'm assuming from the hard drive), then crashed. When she tried to turn it on, she got the blue Dell logo and then two beeps and a black screen that reads:

Primary hard disk drive not found
Fixed optical drive not found
No bootable devices -- strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility

Could someone please confirm that my hard drive has died and cannot be brought back to life. I'm a little confused with the 'fixed optical drive not found.' Even if the HD is dead, shouldn't it see the CD drive? I've been reading a bit and it could be that the IDE controller on the mobo is bad, or maybe an IDE cable? I need to decide if it's worth fixing or if I should just get a new laptop.
 
Insert a bootable CD (like the Dell system recovery disk). If it boots, then the problem is very likely a failed hard drive. Clicking noises are normally because of head damage at the hard drive.

Laptop hard drives can be pretty simple and inexpensive to replace. The last 40GB drive that I did for a client was $65 for the drive. Then it's a matter of re-installing and patching the OS and applications.

Of course, you have to weigh the cost and time of repair with what a replacement laptop would cost you. But that would depend on your needs. Laptops sell for $500 to $2000, plus extra memory, batteries, etc.
 
When I get home I'll see if the BIOS recognizes the HD or CD Drive, then I'll try a bootable CD.

Thanks.
 
Aero,

Try booting and hitting the F12 for the boot options.
There should be an option for the Dell diagnostics utility.
Run it and report back.

P.S. I have seen the errors you have mentioned and it turned out to be a failed HD.
 
Clicking definitely is a bad HD, unless you are sure that a fan is making the noise.

If the data on the HD is critical... I suggest you not mess with it anymore and plan carefully as subsequent boot attempt will increase the likelihood of data being gone forever.

For a desktop HD, when I had a dead HD making clicking noises, I froze it overnight in an antistatic bag... then hooked it up to a working computer, be sure to set the jumper as the correct setting (Slave for most if you have another HD with an OS installed already), I left it in the static bag and let it just hang off of the two cables to hook up the HD, booted the pc, quickly found the files that I needed and then copied and pasted it over to the working drive.

Since you have a laptop, I suggest a firewire, if not USB, external hard drive to be hooked up and installed as the booting drive with the OS on it. (Actually, I don't know if a external can be the booting drive but someone can verify, I'm sure). Bring the frozen HD, put it into a dry static bag. Oh, make sure the HD doesn't touch any part of the internal components as the outside of the static bag with a cold content will condensate (become wet). Just let the HD hang off of it somehow... if this is not possible and you need the data badly, I suggest contacting one of those data recovery services.
 
I appreciate the suggestions. I'm away from home and will give it a try when I get back. There's a couple of small things I'd like off the drive, but nothing critical. I have backup copies of anything I really care about.

The only thing I was confused about was the error message that the optical drive was not found. That made me think about the IDE controller on the mobo, but with the clicking sound it almost has to be the Hard Drive.

Thanks,
Nick
 
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