laptop hard disk failure

[karnoobs]

my laptop dell d600 says no primary hard disk and when i reboot and press F2 for setup sometimes it shows the size of the hard disk and most of the time says NONE. the pc doesnt detect the hard disk and it sounds like the head of the hard disk is halted trying to read but it fails...I tried the diagnostic tests and it failed in DST short test i dont know what DST stands for but it is related to the hard disk... any help on this?

 

[Freestone]

DST = Drive Self Test

Your hard drive has failed and needs replacing. Is your laptop still under warranty? Call Dell support if so.

 

[karnoobs]

is there any way to backup the data on that hard disk?

 

[Freestone]

You could place the drive in a USB enclosure and try accessing it from another PC. Another alternative is to purchase a laptop hard drive to IDE converter and slave it to a desktop PC. No way to guarantee success with either method.

 

[stduc]

If the heads are failing to load probably your only way of getting the data back is to use a professional & probably expensive data recovery service.

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