OEM sata drive not being recognized on sony vaio laptop

[ButIamarocketscientist]

Hello,
Any help. it spins, but will not boot, or boots partially then stops, then not recognized, then maybe later it will recognize and only partially boot

 

[buwish]

Is is showing in the BIOS? How old is the computer? I suspect that it is probably on its last leg and is going out.

 

[frozenlead]

You can run a hard disk diagnostic on it, but chances are if the thing doesn't stay spinning, it's probably damaged.

 

[ButIamarocketscientist]

I am thinking the MBR is corrupt, but, as I am only a rocket scientist, I do not know how to really get to the root of the problem without sending it out to some lab and paying $600 to get the data. But I am not yet convinced that this is what I need to do. ~buwish, it shows on the bios, then it doesn't, then it does,..
~frozenlead, it spins. I can plug it into a usb sata adapter and it will spin all day and night. On the diagnostic reference, I am not sure where to get one for it (fujistu) or which one I need to use,..

 

[frozenlead]

Download the Ultimate Boot CD, and you'll find dozens of diagnostics. My favorite is the IBM/Hitachi drive fitness test.

 

[sam95_95]

Hello,
Any help. it spins, but will not boot, or boots partially then stops, then not recognized, then maybe later it will recognize and only partially boot

On sony web site there is a small program you can down load its under hard drive heading, You must have a floppy drive in your system, you extract files and copy them on a floppy and when you are installing windows at the beginning when "Press F6 if you want to install third party scsi drive" press f6 and then continues then it reads the floppy drive and installs the driver for sata drive, which makes it read sata drive, If you are stuck without floppy like me then you have to install vista where you can use a cd or a usb drive instead of a floppy, but as far XP floppy is the only option. I hope it works out for you.