I dropped my laptop and now it says that the hard drive is not found

[Frosty126]

I dropped my laptop and when I boot it up it says "Boot Device Not Found", when I do the quick check for the hard drive it says Hard drive not installed.

BTW its a Hard Disk Drive

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

Most likely the hard drive was damaged as a result of dropping your notebook.

You will need to install a new hard drive and reinstall the operating system.

Consult the service manual for your specific model notebook (TPN-W121 is not the model number), for the hard drive removal and replacement procedure.

Use this guide for how to find the product number/model number of your notebook...

HP Notebook PCs - How Do I Find My Product Name or Number? | HP® Customer Support

[Frosty126]

Is it possible to recover the data? (It has another drive labeled RECOVERY, but I'm not sure what it is for )

[Paul_Tikkanen]

There is a slight chance of recovering data if you remove the drive, buy a SATA to USB adapter, and then plug one end into the failed hard drive, the other end into a working PC's USB port and see if you can read/copy any of the folders/files you want to save onto a portable hard drive or the PC.

Something like this...

Amazon.com: StarTech.com SATA to USB Cable - USB 3.0 to 2.5” SATA III Hard Drive Adapter - External ...

[Frosty126]

I opened it up (The warrenty expired long ago), uplugged the hard drive and put it back in. Its working again

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That is great news.

Glad you got lucky on that one.