Possible broken hard drive

ILikeBiscuits

Honorable
Oct 12, 2013
4
0
10,510
Recently I dropped my laptop. I started hearing clicking coming from the hard drive so I am under the assumption it is broken. Everything on my computer became essentially frozen except the files that are already open (probably because of my RAM I think). When I restarted my laptop, it detects a hardware/software change so I need a windows7 disc for repair. (In the process of obtaining a disc) Am I correct in assuming my hard drive is done for good, or can I recover it but lose all my data? If it is done, how much should I worry if a new laptop hard drive will fit in my laptop if I buy a new one? I own a HP Pavilion dv6 laptop. Please and thank you.
 
Solution
Ok, Try to mount the HDD in question in a PC as a second drive(non-OS). If it works there then the HDD is alive and you could salvage it, if its not then its dead and no question of salvaging.

Yes its a good idea of using a SSD instead of HDD,(only downside is the storage capacity) and you can do that, but get atleast a 256GB one. The connectors will match. The procedure is almost same for installing Win 7 on a SSD, by inserting Win 7 bootable disk on ODD and you know the rest. But you have to make changes in your BIOS for SATA mode to AHCI for SSD for TRIM function to work. When installing Win 7 on SSD leave other HDD's and SSD's unplugged.

After you have done the installing mount/connect the external HDD and transfer data's to SSD...
Everybody does(your username) ha ha. Now back to action, did you already tried repairing win 7 installation ? What is the current situation ? Do the Laptop responding/working.

The time is not come yet to think of a broken HDD, its still maybe on working condition or not. Data recovery is a tricky question in this situation, you may or may not depending on the HDD's situation.

And if you need a new HDD, then any 2.5" HDD will fit/work on your Laptop so don't worry about that. Concentrate on the situation on what the lappy is doing right now. If the HDD is responding try to run chkdsk from CMD.
 

ILikeBiscuits

Honorable
Oct 12, 2013
4
0
10,510




So I tried repairing with Windows 7. It simply returns to the page where it says I need repair and windows cannot repair because a device is inaccessible. Also when I removed the hard drive, a different screen comes up saying that I need to connect the hard drive. Am I correct in assuming the HDD is done? A friend says the hard drive is poop because of the clicking sound I mentioned. He says only the hard drive would make that kind of sound. If it is poop, can I salvage it in terms of simply reformatting it or something and just start with a clean hard drive? Recovering data isnt an issue. If the HDD is done for good, then I was thinking if I am to get a new drive, why not SSD. I looked it up and it looks like any 2.5inch SSD would work if I also just pop in the windows7 disc to reinstall everything. Also, if I do go the SSD path, I had backed up all my data last summer on my external hard drive. How would the data I backed up from my old HDD behave if I tried to put everything on a SSD.
 
Ok, Try to mount the HDD in question in a PC as a second drive(non-OS). If it works there then the HDD is alive and you could salvage it, if its not then its dead and no question of salvaging.

Yes its a good idea of using a SSD instead of HDD,(only downside is the storage capacity) and you can do that, but get atleast a 256GB one. The connectors will match. The procedure is almost same for installing Win 7 on a SSD, by inserting Win 7 bootable disk on ODD and you know the rest. But you have to make changes in your BIOS for SATA mode to AHCI for SSD for TRIM function to work. When installing Win 7 on SSD leave other HDD's and SSD's unplugged.

After you have done the installing mount/connect the external HDD and transfer data's to SSD, it will behave normal nothing to worry about. But you can't transfer all the data's to SSD because of the capacity of SSD. So transfer only most important data's to SSD, and leave the rest on ex HDD. Good luck.

 
Solution