owura143

I have IBM t22 thinkpad. It has been working fine, abruptly when i turned it on, i heard the whirling-pause and clicking sounds and now getnthis message whenever i try to turn it on "harddrive not installed- if operating system not found- re-install harddrive. Hit any key to exit." I have reseated the harddrive but have had no success.

I have read about this and it seems changing the harddrive does help either. I already ordered a new harddrive, im afraid i wasted my money. How can recover some of the omportant files? Please help.

dai

get an adapter and slave the h/d in a desk top

owura143

How do I do that? What adapter do i need? Is there anyway to slave the hard drive to a laptop?

owura143

My IBM think pad is the one acting up right now. I called IBM support and they think its the motherboard. Now, I have an inspron 4000, i switched the IBM hard drive into that one and it wouldnt recognize it either, i purchased a new hard drive for my T22 and tried it in the inspiron but that is not recognized either. Is it an issue of compatibility?

Dell_CA

Hello,

My name is Mike, I’m a Technical Analyst located at Dell corporate headquarters in Round Rock, TX. I’m part of an internet outreach team developed to interact with the online community regarding technical questions and issues that customers face with Dell products. I read your question and wanted to offer some help.

You can run a pre boot diagnostic from your system by holding down the <Fn> key and then pressing the power button. Release both buttons and the PSA diagnostic should begin. Just follow the on-screen instructions and record the sequence of beeps and make note of any error codes that appear. If your system doesn’t run the test then go into the system BIOS (F2 at boot) and see if the system recognizes the hard drive. If so, the data should be fairly easy to recover, if not then you may be looking at a physical hard drive failure (broken heads or failed platter bearings) which would require a data recovery service to get the data back. Either way, lets look at some ways to try and rescue the information.

In order to see if the data is recoverable you would need to find an external hard drive carrier for a notebook hard drive (2.5"). You can usually find these at any local computer shop fairly cheap. You basically put the hard drive in the carrier which can then be connected to any other computer via USB. This bypasses the need for the OS to be loaded and you should be able to go in to the drives files just like a USB key. It will be an added drive in the “My Computer” options of the host computer (the computer you hook the hard drive carrier to.) If it doesn’t automatically find the drive, once connected via USB, you may have to go into disk management (right click on “My Computer” and choose “Manage” and then “Disk Management”), locate the drive and then right click and choose “Explore.” This should bring up a window that will allow you to see the data on the hard drive in which case you can simply drag and drop the information to another folder on the host computer or you can burn a CD or DVD with whatever data you need off of it.

If the drive didn’t show up in the BIOS, and you can’t see it after connecting it to the host computer and going through Disk Management, then the drive itself may be physically bad and you would have to take it to a data recovery center to get the information off. This can be a VERY expensive process so you may want to weigh the value of the data VS the cost of retrieving it. You can get an idea of the cost by searching the web for “Data Recovery Services” and see if it’s something you’re interested in. Before you do that you may want to look at some software options like Get Data Back, Recover my files, or any other data recovery software programs you can find. I can’t officially comment on their functionality, but I’ve had customers tell me about the software working well for them so it’s at least worth reading about and considering as an option.

As for the hard drive itself, if the system is still under warranty we can certainly replace it for you, but data backup and recovery are areas that our technical teams don’t touch. At most they can recommend some services, but for the most part we can’t do anything about recovering your information.

They say hindsight is 20/20 so this next statement is a bit on the obvious side, but it’s a good reminder. It’s always recommended that you make regular back up’s of your information because as you, and I’m sure many others in this forum, have seen first hand a hard drive can go at any time and usually without warning. I hope this information is helpful and I wish you luck!

Thank you,

Mike
Dell customer advocate

TheMatt

It sounds like the hard drive is possibly going bad.

Order one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817145368

Hook it up to a working computer via USB and see if it sees the disk. If it doesn't, it likely crashed, and you need a new one.