No bootable device (corrupted hdd?)

[georgeyhere]

My Acer Aspire running Windows 7 suddenly froze up during some routine web browsing. I attempted to open up task manager (ctrl-alt-del) but I got an error message. I restarted the computer manually and now I'm getting a no bootable device error. I did some research of my own and I've narrowed it down to two possible errors- a) corrupted hard drive b) loose sata connector
This is a laptop with a lot of irreplaceable data. I am also not quite ready to start stripping apart either.
Advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Reyaz123]

Hard drives on laptops aren't difficult to locate. Usually just a couple of screws on the back of it

You should attempt to remove the hard drive, and put it back in firmly carefully not to break any connectors.

 

[D_Know_WD]

Hi there georgeyhere,

Is the HDD recognized by BIOS? In case it is, you can use some data recovery tool for DOS mode.
In case it is not, I would say that your safest bet for recovering the data is to contact a data recovery company.
Apart from that, it would be nice if you could take the HDD out of the laptop and attach it to another system. Then you will be sure whether there is something wrong with the laptop or the HDD itself.

There are quite a lot of tutorials on the internet on how to take a drive out of the laptop.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

 

[SERT Data Recovery]

This error indicates the computer cannot access the boot device (hard drive) and definitely means there is a hard drive problem. Since you have a laptop the likelihood of you having a loose data connection is improbable. I would suggest a bad cable before that, however still unlikely.

Since you have irreplaceable data on the drive, it's crucial to understand what caused this. Likely culprit: bad sectors, bad read/write heads, bad firmware. BEFORE you try to run software programs on it you need to know why this has happened to avoid making the situation worse. Was the laptop dropped, bumped, banged? If so then you need to get that to a professional with a clean room.

If it has not suffered from impact:
You can either boot to a bootable USB or CD and try to move the files off *see below for warnings. Or you need to remove the drive from the laptop and try to VERY BRIEFLY hook it up to a desktop *this is the safest way in case there are in fact major problems with the drive.

Is the drive making any noises?
*If it is shut it down immediately.

Is the drive recognized by the computer?
*If it is recognized then see if you can gain access to the files and move them off.
*If it freezes up on you, then your hard drive has a problem that software will make worse.

Have any questions ask...

Todd

 

[Stingerxxx]

If the issue is a broken BCD or MFT, it won't recognize as a boot device. There are tools to fix this, though most cost money. Boot Media Builder from Paragon is the one I refer to, it was free when I got it, not sure if they still offer the deal, but worth checking out. If this is not the issue, and the HDD is beyond recovery in a bootable sense, then the options above would be the way to go.

If you boot into any version of Linux that has Gparted as part of it's software suite, you can use that program to view more in-depth information, and there are other programs that do more if you look for them. This might help you narrow down what is causing this and what solution to pursue.