Possible HDD failure? Please help troubleshoot.

[wewum]

My friend delivered his laptop to me, because he dropped it, and when he turns it on, it says: Checking media, fail, checking media fail, and then says no boot device found. I immediatelly suspected hdd failure. Then, I opened up the laptop, and I found that the hdd was making sounds. Do you think that it is the hdd?

 

[atheus]

The conclusion you came to sounds pretty good to me. A HDD is probably the most vulnerable to shock of all the components in a laptop, so it would not be surprising at all (Though SSD's are basically shock proof).