Dell Laptop HD issue

let me try and paint a picture of the situation best I can to see if anyone has any advice...

My Dell laptop froze up on me yesterday so I did a hard reboot. When it was coming to the "starting windows" screen it blacked out and gave me an error that it couldn't read a disc drive. I ran a diagnostic and the HD test failed but everything else was OK. I went to the BiOS screen and it was recognizing the HD but still had no luck when I tried to boot. I opened up the laptop and took the HD out and put it back in (I believe this is called "reseating") and still got the same error...

So I got out my older model Dell laptop which still works but is pretty outdated and is mostly just a backup at this point (although not recently enough or this wouldn't be that big of an issue). I started it up and confirmed it worked fine. I turned it back off and removed the HD and swapped it with the other laptop. (Put confirmed working HD in newer laptop and that HD in the older laptop.) the old laptop would not boot with the new hard drive and the new laptop would not boot with the old hard drive. I swapped them back and confirmed that the old laptop with old hard drive did still work.

So, I bought this
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00CP...abrent+usb&dpPl=1&dpID=51-v0jVUnuL&ref=plSrch

My question is A)is there something I can do with my current laptop to fix and if not B)will that device I purchased (it will be here tomorrow) let me access the data saved onto the hard drive and retrieve it?

My main concern is just getting the data off that HD. I was planning on buying a new laptop soon anyway so this has just expedited that but I want my data/files back!

 

Your drive is probably failing or has now failed. Either that or your Windows install corrupted.

A) You could try running your Dell recovery disc, or run Windows recovery from a Windows disc. I'd wait on this until you do step B.
B) You'll need to use your new cable with the problematic HDD hooked to your old computer. Boot your old computer first, then attach everything. If you attach things before bootup, the computer might get confused. Make sure you supply data and power to your drive. Hopefully have an external drive to save everything off to, because your old PC probably won't have room.

If your old PC can't see the problem drive

1. Try another computer
2. Your drive is probably dead

If you establish your drive is dead, you can try going to the manufacturer website and do a warranty replacement. In the past, I've been able to go to the manufacturer website (like Fujitsu, Hitachi, etc.), type in the serial number, and have them send me an RMA label. I'd send off the drive, and they would send me a working replacement. Many of these drives were nearly 5 years old.

 

Good to know on the warranty - I would've just assumed it was too old. It's at about 3 years I would guess...

I'll try my adapter tomorrow when it gets here. I have a 1TB external drive that I want to put everything on. I would assume by doing option A above it would wipe the hard drive right?

 

It shouldn't, but I would first try to move the data off to a safe place. It might be on its last legs, so get everything off in one quick move. There might be bad sections of the HDD; so if you get errors, you may need to copy small portions at a time.