Sony Vaio Operating System Not Found

[JohnTH]

Computer is a Sony Vaio with 2.5” SATA HDD. Operating system is Windows 7.

When I started the computer I got “operating system not found”

I got into the BIOS to see the issue. The harddrive memory doesn’t appear. I bought an enclosure but the enclosure was no recognized on any of the 5 computers I tried it on. The computer uses Windows 7 so I am guessing that the password protection that Windows 7 has by default somehow plays a role in this.

I can hear the hard drive spin and I do not hear any clicking or other sign of a mechanical failure.
Computer belongs to someone who did not know that hard drives fail so none of the important data is backed up. They have a replacement computer.

My only concern is getting the data off the hard drive to make back-ups.

Any suggestions? Thank you!

 

[popatim]

Password protection would not stop the drive from being recognized.

I can hear the hard drive spin and I do not hear any clicking or other sign of a mechanical failure.

All hdd's make some noise when starting up; in addition to spinning up the heads move and align themselves to the platters and reads some firmware errata stored there and so do click alittle while doing this (normal reading/writing noises)...

if the hdd is spinning up but not making any of the normal startup noises then its a hardware failure that you should not attempt to fix. Send the drive out for recovery if the data is that important. Expect prices to be above $500.