Question: My husband’s 3 year old HP computer had a hard drive crash yesterday. We had an older Dell computer that we updated with security updates and setup for him to use. Today this Dell computer had a hard drive crash. Is there anything we can do?
Answer:The HP – it sounds like the HDD failed. If the drive makes unusual clicks a bit when you turn it on then that’s a pretty good sign it’s gone bad. Some drives click a fixed number of times and then give up while others click continously.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbq8vfs1wYY
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWbnrCMIH1E
The Dell I assume was unused and sat for a long while, this could also be a cause for an early demise of the HDD.
Can you boot into Windows recovery mode? Usually by pressing F11 during startup or by booting up fromm a windows installation disk/usb drive. If so they try running startup repair or loading a restore point (if you made any)