Harddrive not found?

[enjoijeff]

Okay, now this isn't an any particular OS question, but I like the people in this section cos they help me out more... So I was on my way home from my girlfriend's and her mom was talking to me about how their harddrive fucked up. Now this is what puzzled me. She told me that it said it couldn't find the harddrive. So I was wondering how the Hell did it boot without it? Isn't the Boot Record stored on the first sector of the Drive? I'm not much of a Hardware person, but this puzzles me.

[Refalm]

Well, if the harddisk is completely empty, it said "DISK BOOT FAILURE". Maybe she thought that the hole disk was one  

Other than that, look in the BIOS if the drive's there at all. If the drive's completely fscked, do a low-level format.

[WMD]

To keep this on topic of the forum, boot a Linux CD in there and see if it recognizes it.  

[Refalm]

I recommend Knoppix (get the EN version, with the latest version number and the closest date):

ftp://ftp.knoppix.nl/mirror/os/Linux/distr/knoppix

[blackphiber]

yeah, I know my moms hard drive on her laptop is ready to die, the other day it would not boot into either linux or windows, looked into the bios and it did not even show the hard drive.  Serious problem, gave it a light smack and it worked, backed up everything and when it finally does die I should be set, hopefully.