Is my HDD dead?

[mrguy2039]

A week or so ago, I went to start my laptop, and it booted to bios. I tried to boot to windows from there, but it didn't work. Forcing the laptop to restart did, though.

Anyway, a bit later, after having gone away, it was back on the bios screen. This kept happening. Being pretty busy, and only using my laptop sparingly (I do most work at my desktop) I resolved to fix the issue once the working week was over (i.e. tonight). However, now my laptop won't get out of bios at all. I looked at little closer and noted that no HDD was listed as a boot option. I'm not hugely familiar with BIOS screens, but I take it to mean that it's not reading my HDD? This is what it looks like:

I do recall some odd sounds coming from my computer, which did sound a bit like the HDD was potentially dying (I've never had one die, so I am unsure what that sounds like).

Is my HDD dead? Or is there something else I can do? It's still under warranty, and I haven't dropped it or anything (though I fear that Asus' warranty support will try and claim I have, based on a friend's experience with them).

 

[skilltim]

It looks like the controller on the HDD is gone. You can send it off to companies that recover data if you need it but they are £300+. Replace with a SSD for extra speed and reliability.

 

[Colin Lee]

Firstly remove the HDD from the laptop (fully switched off obviously) and then reseat it properly. If no luck see if you can get access to a desktop and plug it in there. If it shows up dead on there then given the fact that you say it was making 'noises' then I think you can safely say it's goosed.

 

[mrguy2039]

Don't need any of the data, as it was just uni documents (saved to one drive), and movies and music (most of which I have backed up) so I'm not too stressed. I did actually have the option to go SSD, and would like one, but having about ~1TB space is important to me, so SSD isn't really an otpion at their current pricing.

Thanks for the advice Colin. I am pretty sure that would violate the warranty, hence not having done it yet. I'll dig out my warranty Ts&Cs and see what the deal is.

 

[Colin Lee]

Ahh, have they sealed the HDD bay with a warranty sticker? Tricky buggers.