no operating system found in hard disk

[skyslk]

i have not put on my system for a month now.when i tried putting it on now it displays a message saying "no operating system found in the hard disk".what should i do

 

[TrainableMan]

Best guess, your hard drive went bad. But a few things to try ... insert a W7 Installation DVD and if start-up repair is available run that (but I suspect it won't be because it should only appear if it finds an OS). If not ... does the W7 installation DVD detect a hard drive at all? If not, it's possible the cables were shaken loose inside, shut down and disconnect the power then open it up and make sure everything is hooked up properly inside. If that isn't it then try replacing the hard drive and reinstalling W7 from the DVD after that..

 

[skyslk]

i tried your suggestions but it did not work.when i replaced the hard drive the system came on.so is there any way i could fix the hard disk and as well extract my data from it?

 

[TrainableMan]

Can you fix it? Probably not.

Depending how it is damaged you may be able to get your data. It's possible the seek arms have jammed into place. Sometimes if you put it in a plastic bag and stick it in the freezer the shrinkage of the metal in the cold will cause them to come free. If that works then you put it in a working computer as a secondary hard drive and you can get your data off as quickly as possible. Then you still throw the drive away.

If the seek arms are moving then you can try software recovery. I've used Stellar Phoenix data recovery in the past with success. It is not free but what I like about it, it showed me what files it could recover before I had to pay for it.

To avoid this problem in the future I always encourage people to periodically back up their data to an external hard drive/flash drive.