Laptop Hard Drive Problems

[That Guy]

I've had that happen before. killing or making an entire chain slow isn't unusual.

best shot is to put it back in the laptop and boot off a bartPE CD and run chdsk, scandisk, and ghost (for a bit by bit backup in case nothing else works). I did that and got the filesystem back on my mom's laptop, though the windows install got hosed and had to be redone.

If the hard drive isn't spinning at all, you can also try freezing it (place it in the freezer for a couple hours) and then try booting it up again (what that fixes is cases where the grease or glue or whatnot leaks onto a moving part. freezing makes it brittle so it'll come loose when the disk spins up, instead of holding it in place. once spinning, the drive can keep it hot enough not to harden again).