[jennefur8675]

The laptop got bumped kinda hard today and after that I got 'disk read error, press Control alt delete to restart' After countless restarts, still this error message. Took the hard drive out and put it back in. Still same error message. No new hardware had been added recently, no cd in drive. How do I troubleshoot from here? Thanks so much

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Howszit?  and that doesn't sound quite right.  Do you get the normal start up screens before that message appears? Have you tried to go into CMOS to see that the drive is being reported properly on the system?  I would also take out the battery to make sure that system is safe to fiddle with.  

 

What is the brand of the notebook/laptop?  I just had a case where a Dell Notebook couldn't find its hard drive.  Somehow my client had bent its bay enclosure and to get the drive to work I had to seat the drive separately then slide the enclosure over it.  There's now no securing screws on the drive but it is tight inside the bay. and working ok.

 

 Hope this helps....

[Mark D]

Howszit?  and that doesn't sound quite right.  Do you get the normal start up screens before that message appears? Have you tried to go into CMOS to see that the drive is being reported properly on the system?  I would also take out the battery to make sure that system is safe to fiddle with.  

 

What is the brand of the notebook/laptop?  I just had a case where a Dell Notebook couldn't find its hard drive.  Somehow my client had bent its bay enclosure and to get the drive to work I had to seat the drive separately then slide the enclosure over it.  There's now no securing screws on the drive but it is tight inside the bay. and working ok.

 

 Hope this helps....

[jennefur8675]

Hello,

Yes I get the normal start up screen. It says Toshiba and then goes right into that disk read error.
I went into some control panel and it said it was booting from hdd, if that's what you mean. I took out the laptop battery before I took out the hard drive and reinstalled it.
It's a Toshiba Satellite L305.

Thanks.

[Mark D]

OK, to get the the laptop's setup, you press the F2 key at start up.  The setup screens will give you info including what drives the system sees.  It should also tell you what size the drive is and other info but that's where I'd start.  Sometimes you might see funny characters in the drive info which may mean the drive is not reporting properly.  Depending upon what the drive manufacturer is will determine what displays, (WD would be the prefix on a Western Digital for example), followed by the model number.  I have seen cases where I get question marks with no drive info.
 
My next step would be to mount the drive on an external usb drive housing where I could check the hard drive health from another system.  If you do not have an external USB drive housing, then I'd try to boot the laptop from a CD or DVD.  Have you made a system restore disk from the laptop?  (I assume you're running Windows 7).  If not, I have even booted a Windows 7 system using a Windows XP CD and run chkdsk to repair a  drive.   Do you hear a clicking noise coming from the laptop?  cuz that's another bad sign...
 
Hope this helps and good luck.  Have you made backups of your data recently? No one ever does so don't fell bad...  

[jennefur8675]

This laptop runs vista. I don't have an external USB housing thing. I did Try and boot from the Toshiba disks and I got nothing. It looked like it was going to boot, but then just a blank screen.

[Mark D]

Sorry, I missed the Vista reference in your title...

 

If the Toshiba disks can't actually do anything, it would appear that your drive has suffered a failure that makes it un-usable, (the Toshiba recovery disks would attempt to find the drive 1st off, since the drive isn't reporting properly, it cannot continue).   What I would try to do next is access the disk from another system to see if there's any data recoverable.  Your best bet is most likely to get a new drive and use those Toshiba disks to re-initialize the system.  If you had data on that failed drive, it may still be retrievable but you will need a way to mount it as a secondary drive, (like an external USB housing).  Sometimes even though a drive cannot run an operating system, it may still be able to copy data off of it, (however usually when a drive cannot report properly it may be "seen" as an un-recognizable disk and report zero space available).  Sorry that your 2015 has started with a drive failure.  Mine started with a filling that popped out of my tooth the day after the dentist went on vacation...  After a week he did fix it but I didn't have the happiest of holidays.    

 

Remember computers are nothing more than appliances and you did mention that this one had a "bump".  I had a Dell here that had a fall onto a tile floor which actually bent its power connection and the mating piece inside the notebook.  After removing some damaged plastic, the power connection did work but the lid could not close.  

 

Hope this helps..

[jennefur8675]

Thank you. I just ordered a usb housing from amazon so we shall see. I tried putting the hdd into another old laptop I had here, but the hdd's are different, so It wouldn't fit in there. I'm pretty sure it's completely gone, cuz that's just the kinda thing that's been happening to me lately. But, I will just press on and not cry about spilled milk (or a spilled laptop) thank you sir for your help!

[Mark D]

Sorry that I couldn't do more for you.  I've had lots of clients that have had hard drives that have failed and its never a good feeling.  If the usb housing can't see the failed drive, there are recovery specialists that can usually get data back, but it is pricey...   

 

Best of luck & God bless...