My computer is not recognizing my hard drive in my toshiba satellite a305-s6857 therefore it will not boot up windows (and when booting up BIOS it says there isnt a hard drive).
I was wondering how to go about testing it because I just got back from some nerd shop and he said he was going to charge a 250 buck labor fee + 400 bucks to install a new hard drive if needed. What is a good program or how should I go about testing my hard drive to see if it needs to be replaced?
If BIOS cannot see the drive,
a) the drive is dead
b) the HDD controller is dead
c) the drive is poorly attached.
So remove the drive and re-attach it. Then boot again. IF you still cannot see the drive in bios, then you should check if your warranty is still valid.
Install it into a portable casing. Connect it up to another computer/laptop (if you don't have one, use your friend's). If the computer can detect the HDD and you can access it without any issue, then the HDD is fine. Else, it's bricked. If HDD is fine, then prob lies with your Satelite.