My laptop was dropped and now I cannot access the hard drive
I dropped my laptop from a TV tray (about 2ft) onto a hardwood floor and now it won’t reboot. It just turns on then the screen says “PXE-E61: Media Test Failure Check Cable.” It’s still under accident protection at best buy and they said it was either the motherboard or HDD that was shot and that there doesn’t seem to be a way to recover my files. They said they could send it to their data recovery center but they want $500-$1k to recover the files since they said it would be difficult to recover the files. Could the mother board or HDD really be shot or could just be the connections need to be reseated? If it is the HDD or motherboard is paying $500-$1k my only option of recovering my files?
First of all, check the hard drive. It’s possible that the hard dive simply got disconnected from the motherboard. Reconnect the hard drive and see if it helps. On most laptops you can access the hard drive from the door on the bottom or on the side.
If the hard drive still not detected find out if the hard drive makes any strange sounds when the laptop is turned on. If the hard drive is clicking or making other repetitive sounds, like it’s trying but cannot start, you will not be able to recover data at home. You’ll have to use recovery room service in order to get data back and it can be very expensive, easily over $1K.
If the hard drive is not spinning at all or it spins but not detected by the laptop, it’s possible that there is a problem with the motherboard. You can try accessing the hard drive using an external USB enclosure. It might work.
February 8th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Sob!
So, I didn’t see any other way to ask you a question other than leaving a comment. Great site by the way, and thanks for any help you might be able to offer me.
Well, my story goes as such…
I too managed to drop my precious p7010 fujitsu lifebook. It worked for all of 1 minute then shut down, giving me a “disk error occurred message”. My heart died a little in side as I was SO angry with myself and I love my computer SO much.
Anyway, after searching on the net for ages on my boyfriends computer, I discovered how to open up the computer and take a look at the hard drive. It all looked fine. Started computer, same message.
I kept giving me the above message and also “PRESS CNTRL ALT DELETE TO REBOOT”. Doing that takes it to the same message. Though I could manage to get to the bios screen and the computer did recognise that the drive was there. My flatmate is sort of a computer whizz so he took my hard drive to a friends house to see if they could save the data. They couldn’t. They said that…mmm, what was it…well, that basically yes, there was a hard drive error and they couldnt access my files.
I then put the drive back in my pc and used the computers restore disc. Obviously I lost all my files, which was annoying BUT it made my pc ok for a while, which I was very happy with. I changed my antivirus, downloaded a few programs which I had wiped and…for a while all was well, then my computer froze. Wouldn’t do anything. I switched it off and since then, have been in a loop of switching on and off and the freezage of my pc. I switches on. It gets to windows, though not always, seems to function, I can even open the internet, but then it freezes. I can’t even turn it off. Then I just power it off manually and the same fun over and over again.
I have been pricing replacement hard drives today and fine, they’re not expensive. My fear though is that perhaps the problem is more than just the hard drive. I don’t want to experience a never ending array of problems due to not knowing what was going on in the first place, so any advice you could give me would be great.
Frantically yours,
The Fool Who Dropped Her Laptop.
February 24th, 2008 at 3:37 am
The same thing happened to me, my hard drive, fell out due to a missing screw, unknown to me at that time. I inspected the hard drive and found two prongs stuck together.I believe the HD was not under warranty.
How much would it cost to replace a 90 hard drive (approximately) on a European Toshiba Tecra A2? Please mail me the response.
February 24th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Darien,
I inspected the hard drive and found two prongs stuck together. Can you bend them back to normal position with a small flathead screwdriver?
For a Toshiba Tecra A2 you should use a regular notebook IDE hard drive (5400RPM default hard drive speed). Notebook IDE hard drives are not expensive. You should be able to find a new 100GB 5400RPM hard drive for about $110-130.
April 7th, 2008 at 3:11 am
Hi,
I have a problem with a laptop Dell C640. First, the laptop fails to recognize the drive, I checked the BIOS and it detects the drive, but the laptop still won’t boot to XP. I thought, maybe the drive starting to fail, so I make a back up and buy a new one (Samsung 80gb drive) to replace my old 20gb drive. After I install it in my laptop, the laptop still won’t recognize it. Now, I’m scratching my head not knowing what to do with it. I checked the BIOS and it detects 80gb fine and after that I use windows XP CD to install O/S but it only detect 7550mb on my 80gb. At this point, I desperately need advice from you guys to point me in the right direction. One more thing, when I checked my Dell BIOS, the service tag number is not shows. At the end, please help me?
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:53 am
I bought an hp laptop from several days and i need to access the hard drive, notice that the hard drive is empty and needed to be formated. so i attempted to use the ms-dos but this operating system program couldn’t finde the drive. is the any answer that could one of you nice gice suggest.
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Don’t know if my problem is a hard drive problem or not, used my hp notebook then left for a while returned to use it again. When I turned it on the lights came on and the drive sounds like it wants to start for about a 2 seconds, I hear a click then it turns itself off and turns itself back on. It will keep doing this until I force powerdown. There is nothing that comes up on the screen.
thanks!
February 22nd, 2010 at 2:30 pm
i am trying to find out what is wrong with my laptop i start it up put the dell reboot disk in then when it goes to the start windows recovery it says to push f8 it does not do nothing
February 22nd, 2010 at 2:38 pm
robert,
Are you trying to reinstall Windows? What is wrong with the laptop?