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#1
PC suddenly crashed - can't find hard drive
First of all, this is regarding an old 1720 Dell laptop running Windows 7 32 bit. I left my PC running (working perfectly) while in class, and came home to an error message reading something like "the HDD can't be found". Okay, I reboot the computer, it goes past the setup screen, then I get a blank screen, until the computer automatically reboots after a few minutes.
I tried booting from the Windows install disk, but it freezes while loading every time. I burned a "recovery disk" - same story. I tried putting the HDD in the other HDD bay, and that doesn't work (error - HDD can't be found). I tried putting the HDD in an external hard drive enclosure, and that doesn't work. It is, however, recognized when I connect the external enclosure to a different computer. The problem is that I don't have access to the files.
The HDD occasionally makes a clicking sound, and I'm not sure if that's normal. However, if the HDD is toast, the recovery and install disks should still boot, and they're not. Also, the HDD shows up when connected to another PC through the external HDD enclosure, so it seems like it isn't totally dead.
Do you have any ideas how to fix this? I don't really care if I have to do a reinstall, but I need to recover some of the files first, and right now I don't have access to them through the external enclosure...
PS: I've made no recent software or hardware changes. The HDD is a 320GB SATA