toshiba hdd errors

hi please help i have a toshiba satellite l350 and when i switched it on the other day just a black screen with cursor anyway to cut a long story short i have bought a communictor c1 to plug the hdd into my sony vaio running windows 7 it will find the drive but takes a long time it then shows the drive as to drives g: and h: if i try and access them my computer says not accessible if i try and format them it says i cant format them i have been trying to get some pictures off the drive but i have spent about 3 days on it now and i just want to get the laptop back up and running i do have a recovery disc that i made when i got the laptop but if i put the hdd back into the laptop and load the recovery discs it never gets past the format drive section after picking your language and english windows 7 oe im pretty good with computers and understand the basics i have tried to get into the command prompt and find the drive but if i get in to cmd it only allows me into x:>sources im presuming this is my ram and not actually the hdd i also have a windows 7 install disc but when it gets to the section where you pick your windows there is nothing there and asks to load the drivers which i have no idea where they can be found any help would be glady appreciated
thanks
simon

Hello cosw0rth. Welcome to the Forum.

First, take a deep breath and calm down! If you had been successful with any of the procedures you have tried you would have destroyed your data.

First, go here: Downloads and download the Hitachi Drive Fitness test: CD IMAGE. You will need a second (working) PC. Double click the ISO (in W7) to burn a bootable CD. (Note: Toshiba doesn't have it's own diagnostic for bootable CD, but the DFT will work just as well).

Then change the boot order on the problem machine (from BIOS settings which I assume you can still get into) to boot from the CD first. Put the CD in the tray and restart. Run the test and see if it can 1) see the drive, or 2) determine it's condition.

If you need to try and retrieve data then hook the drive up to the other PC again and download and run RECUVA to try. Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download

hi thanks for the reply ive been a bit busy past few days so not been sorting my laptop ok im at a different stage now for some reason the drive is now formatted well thats what i think its sayin its says unallocated space being almost the full 250gb i have placed the drive back into the toshiba and ive tried running the recovery discs it comes up with x:\windows\system32\cmd.exe screen and then says this
the command completed successfully
system disk is DISK0
secind disk not available
checking for drive W:....
DRIVE W: not mounted --> no unmount needed
checking for drive c:...
c: unmounted!
checking for drive V: not mounted -->no unmount needed
try to remove all letters from potential partitions on hdd0 ...
try to remove all letters from potential partitions on hdd1 ...


it then goes threw some install stage but then says unable to install
press any key to contiune then reboots back to hdd which then says no boot

hope this helps i just want to format everything now and get the drive working back in laptop if you can help

thanks
simon

Just be aware that if you "just reformat everything" that you will be left with a blank hard drive and you will need to reinstall Windows and all of your programs and restore all of your user data from your backups.

You could wipe the drive clean using Windows Diskpart utility - CLEAN ALL command, then format it if you are comfortable with keyboard commands.
(Note: you could try just the CLEAN command if you needed to try and recover data)
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/682-command-prompt-startup.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html

Use Option 2: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html

Or you could download and burn the bootable CD of Partition Wizard and use that if you would rather have a graphical user interface.
Free Partition Magic alternative, partition manager freeware, partition magic server, partition magic Windows 7 and free Partition Manager software for Windows 7/8/VISTA/XP/2000 and Windows Server 2003/2008/2000.

If neither utility can recognize or work with the drive then there is a real possibility the drive is dead.

thanks im going to try it now and will let you know the outcome

ok i have used the partition wizard i have the drive connected to my working laptop i have created a partition onthe drive it has 8mb at the beginning that says unallocated the G: NTFS 232.9 (100% used)

is this where i need to be to be able to put back in the toshiba laptop ?

cheers
simon

Yes, you should be good to go.
Do not worry about that 8MB unallocated. It is used for 'housekeeping' purposes.

so do i put in the recovery disc and run as a recovery or put in the windows 7 disc and reinstall as a new?

cheers

That is completely up to you.

Personally I will always install W7 fresh. The recovery disk will load all the bloatware and crap that comes pre-installed and slows the PC down.

However, if there is some free program that came pre-installed that you want back then you might opt to do the recovery and then do a major clean up afterward.

hi ok update i put windows 7 in boot from cd and then it says loading files along the bottom then microsoft at the bottom with the green bar going backwards and forwards then goes to a blank screen with a cursor ?

si

hi ok update i put windows 7 in boot from cd and then it says loading files along the bottom then microsoft at the bottom with the green bar going backwards and forwards then goes to a blank screen with a cursor ?

si

Mmmm.
That part of the Windows installation does not even involve the hard drive. That part is where the files necessary to install windows are loaded into memory (I think it is memory).

Do you get to a point where it says "Starting Windows" and you get the black screen with the coalescing squares?

Is this a new, retail DVD of W7, or a disk you burned?

no didnt get to any windows screens and its a windows disc ive burned but previuosly i have got a lot further than this with it ? its a mess aint it lol!!

im just thinking would them files have been loaded to the ram !!!

Yes it is.
I checked to be sure and one of our Windows gurus confirmed that only RAM is involved at this point in the process.
He says that that green progress bar appears sometimes on older systems with older hardware.

So that raises the possibility that there may be other things going on.

How much RAM is installed in the laptop?

EDIT: What is the complete model number of the toshiba satellite L350?
Two things:

• You might want to see if you can get your hands on a retail copy of W7, or try burning a new ISO.
• You probably should download, burn, and run Memtest: http://www.memtest.org/ if you can't get the Install Program to load.

its a toshiba l350-262 it has 2gb ram i dont think its ever goner work lol its only a year old as well

ok took battery out dont know why but got starting windows screen then the coloured windows moving around then the black screen with the cursor if that helps any !

And that is a far as it got?