HDD not recognized on laptop or External Enclosure

[betakappa19]

Out of the blue, my laptop would no longer recognize the HDD.
It says, on start-up, "No Bootable Device-- Insert boot disk and press any key"

I have taken the hard drive out and put it another laptop. Same issue. I have a external enclosure case (USB), but the laptop won't recognize it. Oddly, it shows up in the Device Manager with the HDD model etc and shows up under Disk Management as "Disk 1, Unknown, Not Initialized". It won't let me initialize it.

Any thought on how to recover the data?

 

[benji720]

Try testdisk - it's free and it has a good recover rate in my experience. There are some other good free and paid tools but I like testdisk the most because I've had the best success with it.

If that doesn't work, you can always send it to a data recovery lab but that'll set you back a bit.

 

[betakappa19]

Thanks for replying, unfortunately that doesn't work since testdisk (or any other program) can't find the hard drive. It doesn't show up. My guess is that I will have to take it in and pay $$ if I want the data.

 

[benji720]

If it shows in Device Manager, usually testdisk will see it. Oh well, worth a shot I guess. Sorry I couldn't be more help!