Toshiba Data Recovery – What to do if Your Hard Drive Fails

When you turn your Toshiba Satellite laptop on, all that comes up is a screen that displays “In touch with tomorrow TOSHIBA” and at a bottom of that screen it gives an option to press F2 or F12 with a status bar that does not move. If you select F12 nothing happens, then if you select F2 it brings up some words “Please Wait…”. You have tried removing a battery, power plug and waited, then put that battery back and turned power back on with no luck.

You have inserted a back up disk and this will not fire up. If that laptop is bad, can I retrieve all the information from it you ask? Please disconnect an AC Adapter, take out battery, and press that laptop’s power button for a minute to drain any remaining power.

Reseat that laptop hard drive, by taking it out and then putting it back in. Power on and see if it will boot normally. Remove that HDD hard disk drive according to some following procedures.

Release one HDD cover screw securing a HDD cover. Remove a HDD cover. Pull out that HDD strap. Please reinsert that hard drive and then try powering it on with just an AC Adapter.

Please don’t plug that battery in yet. Power off that laptop. Turn that computer upside down.

Release one optional memory cover securing that screw. Remove a memory cover. Spread out two memory lock latches so that a memory module pops up.

Pull that memory module up and out at an angle, using care to avoid touching any connectors. That memory cover should be in middle of underside of laptop. Reseat any memory.

Try to power on that laptop. If it still doesn’t boot Windows properly, then if there are two memory sticks try testing one at a time.

Also, there might be a bad memory slot, so you can try testing a memory slot one at a time. Can you try booting it up without a hard drive. Also, are there any beep codes or flashing led codes?

If there was more than one stick of RAM, make sure to try to boot it with just one at a time to narrow down if it is a bad memory stick. See if it will boot off a hard drive. If you think your hard drive might be failing, you can try inserting your hard drive back into that laptop and booting off a recovery disc.

You can try selecting “System Recovery Options” on that recovery disc. Please choose startup repair. If a startup repair option does not work, boot off that recovery disc again, and this time choose “System Restore”.

Choose a date before you began having problems with Windows not booting to restore Windows to. If no hard drive is detected, see if that BIOS detects your hard drive and or if there is a hard drive diagnostic test you can run. If your BIOS is set to automatically detect your hard drive and your BIOS does not detect a hard drive, then that is a sign your hard drive is failing.

You can take that hard drive to a computer repair shop and see if they can get data off of it. Another option is to place that hard drive in a ziplock bag and freezing it for at least an hour. See if it will then boot off of it long enough to get your data off of it.

Only try this if your not worred about potentially damaging your hard drive further. If you can afford it, you can take your drive to a data recovery service. Otherwise you will need to buy another hard drive and reinstall Windows using an installation disc or recovery disc.