HD pros: Is my hard drive toast?

Hi, all. I'll try and make this short and sweet:

Had Google Chrome open on my laptop, noticed it stopped working with a "waiting for cache" notice in the status bar. Nothing would respond, so I restarted the computer.

As Windows reboots, gives 'disk not found' errors and refuses to boot.

BIOS still detected HD (internal SATA).

Attempted to load Ubuntu (USB), it REFUSES to boot with the HD in the computer. As it attempts to detect the HD, it spits out I/O Buffer errors and 'READ FPDMA QUEUED' stuff.

Parted Magic (USB stick) also refuses to load if the HD is connected.

Disconnected the HD, booted into Ubuntu (USB stick). Put the HD in an external USB case, plugged it in, and the HD spins/light blinks for a good 5 minutes. Ubuntu spends forever trying to detect the disk. Disk Utility sees the HD, but GParted does not. I cannot browse the HD. Disk Utility reports an "unknown" volume.

I'm going to go try Parted Magic once more and see if Test Disk can work with the drive if connected via USB.

Any ideas?

Sounds like you tried what most of use would have suggested trying to attempt and see if the hard drive is even visible to any OS or program. Having put it in a external USB case, its obviously not the laptop SATA port that is the problem, but the drive itself.

And after all you tried and failed with, I'd have to say the drive is toast. I'd suggest if you can even get it recognized to try and see its SMART values. If the drive isn't making some abnormal sounds, then maybe the board itself bit the dust if the SMART data shows all good. This could mean that you could do a board swap with the same model drive and hopefully retrieve any important data that you may not have backed up; you did do regular backups, yes?

I would also say the drive is toast. You've effectively tried a different data cable, power source and hard drive controller - so it isn't likely the laptop. If you have a desktop you could try it in, it would be worth a shot, but I wouldn't expect it to function. RMA time, most likely.

thideras said:

I would also say the drive is toast.

Click to expand...

QFT. Looks like a faulty HDD.

I've had limited success over the years with cooling the drive down to get data, if you're hard up for any data on the drive.

And I'd agree with everyone else, time to dig a hole and have a funeral

I've had limited success over the years with cooling the drive down to get data, if you're hard up for any data on the drive.

Click to expand...

I've recovered data that way a couple times and not recovered it a couple times. Always worth a try!