Probable HDD Failure???

[Aria_Bashiri]

I plopped a 160GB HDD in a laptop that's old drive had died, I took this 160GB Hitachi drive out of my old PS3 that had died and placed it into my laptop, ran Windows, and all was well for 6 months. Tonight, I turned my laptop on and it froze completely in the middle of what I was doing. I turned it off, I started it up again and it gave Windows 8's cringy BSOD, couldn't read the cause of the BSOD in time, afterwards, it restarted, and told me to put in a boot device(meaning the HDD wasn't being detected), I restarted it, and then it prompted me to the Windows repair menu, but when I went to repair I was given an error along the lines of "The HDD which windows is installed on is locked" saying that it couldn't repair anything. I restart my system again and it boots up Windows and as I sign in, my computer freezes again. Definitely points to HDD failure, but could this possibly be another thing? I wasn't able to securely install my hard drive completely, lost a few mounting screws, so think it might have fallen out of place? I hope the SATA connectors in the laptop haven't broken in this case, if that's the case, RIP my laptop.


Tell me what you think the problem is, I'm not sure.

 

[drtweak]

try running the Crystal Disk Info in my signature. If you are having issues with it staying on very long maybe download the portable version and start windows in safe mode. It if says anything but "Good" you have an issue but even if it does say good you can still have hard drive failure going on.

 

[puttynene]

Continue to press F2 a couple of times during the startup to enter the BIOS.
2. Advanced -> SATA Operation in BIOS settings from Smart Response Technology to ATA
3. Change this to ATA, the drive was unlocked.
4. Refresh "System Refresh"
5. Restart the system and log in using "Safe mode".
6. Made sure all the data were there.
7. Then restarted and changed the BIOS setting to Smart Response Technology.

 

[Aria_Bashiri]

Sorry guys, I opened the laptop up, HDD wasn't fastened well and wasn't connected to the SATA cables. It's a working drive.