Is The Hard Drive Bad?

My son dropped his laptop, yes dropped it. When powering up, I get the BIOS screen and then it says "NO Operating System Found ".

I then go to the diagnostics in the BIOS and do a hard drive test and it says "No Hard Drive Found "

I have removed and reinstalled the hard drive a couple of times and still nothing. Also when booting it makes more noise than I normally hear with hard drives.

My son already ordered a recovery disk from HP, he is pretty sure it is the drive and so am I.

Is there anything else I might check before I order a new drive?

 

Download the testing utility from your drive manufacturer's web site. Be sure the connections inside are good. Run the utility. Whatever it says can be trusted.

There is always the possibility, though, that something else is damaged but not near as likely.

I hope your laptop doesn't have one of those second-rate-brand hard disks you can't get a testing utility for.

 

I just ran the Hitachi test utility

Failure Code 0 x 20 Device not found

I thank both of you for your response. My son needs a new Hard Drive. I'll start looking for one tomorrow.

 

I need to update. It definately was the Hard Drive. Replaced it this morning, and BIOS does see it. So now I'm just waiting on the restore disk from HP.

I wonder if I put XP on it? Located all of the drivers already. Hhmmmmmm......

Naw, I'll put it back like it was.