Laptop Hard Disk Problem (Not Detecting)

Question

I have a problem with my Acer Aspire One D255.

It fell off like from 1 feet above ground 2 days. Since then the hard disk is not being detected in the BIOS. I opened the netbook and removed it and re inserted the hard disk and it worked for like 5 minutes and stopped.

I followed the same thing and again it worked for 2 mins. Now the problem is that even to the slightest movement of laptop the hard disk is not being detected.

Now, I have another Sony Vaio laptop which is giving me the same problem.

Coinsidently the hard disks in both the laptops are Toshiba. And 2 days back when I fell this netbook I swapped the hard disks once to check if the hard disk is working or not. So do you think is there anything with these swapping of disks.

Are these hard disks dead? Because I have very important data in both of them. After re-inserting them for 5-6 They work for like 2 mins provided they are not moved even the slightest.

(pardon my english)

Answer 1

It does sound like the drives have been damaged. I think it's time to buy some new drives and look into trying to get the data from the old ones while they still work at all. It might be worth plugging the damaged drives into a desktop PC and transferring the data to that. Assuming they are sata drives the connectors are the same on desktop and laptop PCs