Using Boot Disk to Determine if the Laptop Hard Drive is working or not

How to check whether the hard drive in the laptop has failed? or the failure for the laptop to boot up is due to motherboard issues?

The idea is to create a Boot Disk using a USB flash drive and then attempt to boot the unbootable PC or Mac computer with the Boot Disk. 

Below are the Steps to Create a Boot Disk and Configuring the Computer to Boot from it.

I. Create a Boot Disk on an External Drive with Windows OS or Mac OS

Steps to create Boot Disk for Mac

Steps for creating Windows Boot Disk

II. Configuring the PC or Mac computer to boot from the external boot drive

The boot sequence of the laptop can be changed so that it boots up from the external drive rather than from the computer internal hard disk. 

Steps to Boot from USB External Drive

For Windows PC:

1) Locate the PC make/model (e.g: Lenovo Thinkpad) and take note of the keys to enter the BIOS (basic input/output system) from the manufacturer.

2) Restart the computer and while it is booting up, hit either <Esc>, <Del>, <F1>, <F2>, <F9>, <F10>, <F11> or <F12> repeatedly to enter into the computer BIOS.

3) On the BIOS menu, go to the Boot Sequence and it will show the current sequence of drives that will be used for booting up the PC.

4) Select and then move the desired boot drive right to the top of the boot sequence list. (i.e: On the screen, select and move the USB external drive that you want the PC to boot from, straight to the top position)

5) Save the configuration and then Exit the BIOS.

6) Computer will restart and should boot from the USB external drive instead of the internal hard drive of the PC.

For Mac Computer:

1) Power up the Mac, then Press and hold the Option key as you start up the Mac.

2) On the Startup Disk Menu, Select the External USB Drive (Bootable) and then Click Continue or the Arrow.

3) Restart the Mac and it should boot up from the external USB drive.

If the Laptop PC or MacBook can boot up from the USB boot drive, then the issues are likely due to the internal SSD or hard disk drive. Several types of problems such as bad sectors or a crashed hard drive could be the causes of failure. 

At this stage you can carry out some level of system rescue on the internal hard drive to salvage it. Alternatively, if you are not technically inclined, then look for a trusted data recovery service company to recover the data in the laptop hard drive.

If you find this data recovery resource helpful, share this page with those that need it now.

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