Replace it. It is toast.

mine is doing the same thing......its only about 2 years new

You both should get one of these, then pull your hdd out, put it in a ziploc bag, then in the freezer overnight.  Be ready to put it into a desktop and back it up immediately when you pull it from the freezer.

thanks for all your help....I dont think these computers should be giving all this trouble , just as the warranty is up they are dead....cant be bothered.....I give up

Please educate me:

If I buy one of these adapters and connect laptop harddrive to my desktop will I be able to recover all the data that was lost?

Is there a written procedure how to perform the magic in the above step?

What is the purpose of freezing the laptop hard drive?

Thanks for your suggestions,

Ron

 

 

The freezing trick works sometimes to free a seized bearing, and is due to the different Coefficient of Expansion(and contraction) of various metal alloys. It is the way steel Cylinder Sleeves are put into aluminum blocks on car engines. Kingstongirl and motionless, you should check with the MFR of your drive to see if perhaps it is still in Warranty

 

Message Edited by leduke30 on 03-12-2004 11:00 AM

Yes I just had this problem two days ago. I have an inspiron 8100. Although im on my 2nd hard disk. A toshiba.

 

ITs really easy to fix. My drive was making a few noises. It doesn't mean its bad, its just that right now, its having trouble reading, hence the noise.

Mine said no hard disk detected , not even in the bios screen.

 

You need to do a low level format.

 

Maxtor, has a great utility. I use it all the time. ITs a low level format util that works for just about any hard drive. you probably can find it on their web site. ITS NOT JUST FOR MAXTOR either you can try it! It wont hurt.

 

Once you do a low level format on the hard disk it will revert back to normal, and now say, "no operating system found"

 

Then you can install a pirated, or real version of windows :).

 

In order to do this, find a working computer. Download this program to a floppy disk, reboot, press f2 to select the disk drive to boot from, and then the utility will start. It happens all before the HD disk is even accessed. I thought i lost my computer! But i did this and i was like wow! I should have bought the warranty, but i was stupid. Like im sure most of us are.

 

hope this helps.

this will also fix any bad sectors. Its really nice. You can even use the program to do an advance check on your hd. If it detects any errors at least you will know if its repairable or just a throw away!