Dead HD?

I need to ask for help for a difficult problem I have with my brother's laptop. He is running windows xp home, and the unit came to me with the blue screen and error message "unmountable_boot_volume".

I was able to boot KNoppix Linux from cd and see files on the hd.

I searched through here and tried to run chkdsk /r from the recovery console, but it failed. Tried to do a reformat, but it failed as well. Loaded the diskgenius program, and it saw the partitions, but surface scan failed. So I did a low level format from the PC Beginner cd which seemed to go ok for around 90% of the cd, when all of a sudden, I received a timeout error.

Now there is no HD visible to any program. Windows, KNoppix, or DiskGenius. The fact that it disappeared freaks me out. Anyone have any ideas beyone buying a new HD?

 

Certainly doesn't sound promising. The fact that you can no longer access any info is not good, as you realise. Hope you have backups.

Maybe go to the hard drive manufacturers website and see what hard drive recovery tools they may have listed. Being a laptop it may be hard to check out who made the hard drive, without major disassembly. It is easy on my Gateway as it only means removing the second hard drive sled ( 2 seconds work), and removing around 6 small screws on either the first or second hard drive to get to the naked hard drive/s. It may not be as easy on your bro's laptop.
Wish you luck. Bazza

 

You should try Ontrack disk, download Utility to fix it from Company that make your HD, such as Hitachi, Toshiba,.....if you do it succes that your computer see HDD in bios and it can format at dos, running Partition Magic to cut bad sector or HDD regenerator to hide bad track.