BIOS detects Harddrive but my Harddrive is not spinning

[Xenokeist]

Hi guys! I need your help. I think you guys can help me with this one.

As you see, I have this laptop that I use since 2013. It's a Samsung Series 3 (NP370R4E-S06PH) with an installed Windows 8. Then eventually I got it to 8.1.

Situation:
Before it all got messed up, I was able to stream movies the day before I experienced the problem. First experience of the problem is that my laptop began to have this very slow response time like it takes 5-10 minutes to open the File Explorer. So I had run some troubleshooting but to no avail. I tried restarting it but it is still the same pace as it was. Ive done the hard reset, tried to boot to safe mode and still to no avail.

Then suddenly it went "all boot options are tried, press f4....." Tried pressing F4 but it went back to the same message. I tried tinkering the BIOS to see if it works according to some threads I have read here. Still same.

I found out my 1tb HD is not spinning anymore but the BIOS detects the harddrive.

What should I do? I don't want to spend a hundred dollars to retrieve all my data. Nor buying a new harddrive and OS.

 

[McHenryB]

How do you know the drive is not spinning?

If it isn't, then the drive is broken. You have no choice other than to buy a new one. Without spending a lot of money the data on the original drive is lost. That's why we keep backups.

 

[Xenokeist]

Hi McHenryB.

I opened the back flap of my laptop to get a feel if my harddrive is still working. I dont feel that mini vibration when the disc inside makes when it spins.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there Xenokeist,

You will need to use some data recovery tool for DOS mode(as your system cant boot up). After that, you will need to use some HDD testing tool for DOS.
In order to be absolutely sure whether there is something with the laptop or the drive itself, you can just take the HDD out of the laptop, attach it to another system with SATA to USB adapter and see whether you will be able to access it. Keep in mind that this sometimes could void the warranty.

In case the issue persists and the HDD doesn't power up, then you will need to contact a data recovery company.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD