# No hard drive detected!!



## problemcase (Sep 24, 2007)

My DELL Latitude D520 Windows XP laptop had been working fine until one day it suddenly told me there were no bootable devices. I ran the onboard diagnostics and it said there was no hard drive detected. It's only a year and a half old and i have no idea what is wrong. Can anyone help??
Thanks...


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## pinntech (Aug 26, 2004)

Hi, welcome and happy Sunday!

Well, as much as I hate to disappoint you, it does indeed sound like a fail hard disk drive. This solely based on the &#8220;built-in&#8221; diagnostics results that you provided. They are usually good a determining when the drive is not detectable, but that&#8217;s about all.

Let me see if I can find some documentation on your laptop, but &#8220;normally&#8221; the task of replacing the drives in laptops now days is pretty simple to do. Even at the beginner level.

Do you have your restoration disk?

Thanks and have a wonderful day!

Shane


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## problemcase (Sep 24, 2007)

HI Shane, yep having a good sunday thanks. Is it possible to retrieve anything from the hard drive. I do have the recovery disk but didn't want to use it yet. could it be a loose connection somewhere?


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## pinntech (Aug 26, 2004)

I'm back… I found some really good documentation for your laptop on Dell's support page.

Removing the HDD:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd520/en/sm_en/hddrive.htm#wp1123687

Complete service manual:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latd520/en/sm_en/index.htm

Thanks and have a wonderful day!

Shane


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## Rich-M (May 3, 2006)

Something like this could be used to copy off anything from the old drive...if it cannot be read you can try freezing it for 4 hours in a Ziplok bag and then try again and copy quickly if you see anything.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2849277&CatId=470


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## pinntech (Aug 26, 2004)

Hi again&#8230;.

Well, it is possible that &#8220;something&#8221; is loose, but highly unlikely unless you dropped the laptop recently!

Sure, take the drive out and reseat it&#8230; try to see if it will access. No doubt about that one & it&#8217;s worth trying too!

As to data recovery&#8230; It&#8217;s always worth a try, but &#8220;NOT DETECTED&#8221; usually means either the controller board on the drive is faulty or the drive motor is dead.

You can buy a 2.5&#8221; to 3.5&#8221; hard drive adapter and hook it up to a normal PC to try and retrieve the data. It&#8217;s always worth a try, but I wouldn&#8217;t get your hopes up &#8220;too high&#8221;. There are professional data recovery providers that can get the information off the drive regardless of the state. However, it better be REALLY important because that is a very costly service!

As to &#8220;freezing&#8221; the drive&#8230;. I have never seen that work when the drive is not detected at all. I have seen it work on a &#8220;failing&#8221; drive that gets extremely HOT when you try to recover the files and dies because it overheats.

I hate to admit this, but I actually managed to get data off of a drive by slamming it super hard, FLAT on it&#8217;s TOP SIDE on the ground too. It ran after slamming it down. However, I do not recommend trying this unless you JUST DON&#8217;T CARE anymore and say &#8220;what the heck&#8221; better than nothing.

Good luck and have fun!

Shane


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## Badashell (Aug 9, 2007)

Recovering files from old/formatted/injuried harddrives is quite simple with Getdataback from http://www.runtime.org/


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