Toshiba Satellite L550 wont boot, HDD only sometimes recognized in BIOS

[Victimmy]

So this is my problem on my old Toshiba, it was running fine up until this point when suddenly

- windows wont operate
- originally laptop would get to manufacturer screen but would not respond to attempts to open BIOS and would then go to a 'not quite black' screen where it would stay for ages before turning off
-After removing battery and DC then holding the on button repeatedly (as advised in another thread) the computer suddenly would respond to commands to open BIOS but still wouldn't boot windows
-I reset factory BIOS settings and although I cant imagine I would ever have changed them they were slightly different
-BIOS will occasionally not recognize HDD but even when it does recognize HDD it wont boot windows
-Boot menu is set to look for HDD first

I thought maybe it was the CMOS battery but am thinking it might be the HDD at fault

any advice would be great before I go and buy the stuff I need to manually exchange my HDD data to an external HDD because I'm worried if it is the HDD which is damaged this might be a waste of money and I'd be better off getting a technician to do it for me

cheers,

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Victimmy.

If you suspect that the drive might be at fault, I'd suggest that you try it with a different computer either externally (via a SATA to USB adapter, external enclosure or a docking station) or internally via a SATA connection to see if it's properly recognized. If it is, backup anything important you might have on it. If you still can't sea the drive, the try accessing it via Linux Live CD/USB, to see if its recognized and if you can get to your data to back it up, or try some of the data recovery options from this thread - http/www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

Note that this could be also caused by a faulty SATA port or cable, or a motherboard problem.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Victimmy]

Hey there, Victimmy.

If you suspect that the drive might be at fault, I'd suggest that you try it with a different computer either externally (via a SATA to USB adapter, external enclosure or a docking station) or internally via a SATA connection to see if it's properly recognized. If it is, backup anything important you might have on it. If you still can't sea the drive, the try accessing it via Linux Live CD/USB, to see if its recognized and if you can get to your data to back it up, or try some of the data recovery options from this thread - http/www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1644496/lost-data-recovery.html

Note that this could be also caused by a faulty SATA port or cable, or a motherboard problem.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

Cheers Boogieman_WD,

I bought a SATA to USB adapter and connected it up to another computer, it seemed to run fine although I didn't boot the computer with it. I transferred the files I wanted to an external drive with a few issues but I think this was only due to a couple of corrupt files.
I guess this is enough to say that the HDD is fine and the problem lies somewhere else in the computer, perhaps the SATA port etc like you mention...

Thinking I will go ahead and buy a new laptop, thanks for advice

 

[Boogieman_WD]

No worries mate. You could try to send it to a service shop to see if the issue is repairable, which in most cases it usually is, instead of going for a new laptop right away if you haven't planned on doing it anyway. Just to make sure that it's not the drive, I'd still recommend that you test it with an HDD diagnostic tool, to see what's the situation with it.

Cheers!