Laptop support

So yeah, I got this old Satellite Pro recently. It was working fine till it slid of some books. It didn't even fall really, just slid to the floor. But Now I get this message saying there's no hard drive. I took it out and found that the hard drive was secured with electrical tape. Now, I'm not relay computer savant, but that's not standard procedure, right? So now my hard disk sounds like it has something loose in it. I don't know if that's bad or not, but I'm guessing it is. So what should I do? Try to fix it? Scrap it? Wear it as a stylish hat? I need feedback peoples.

STYLISH HAT!

*send pics*


go ahead and try to fix it yourself, your gunna have to buy a new HD anywayz.

Actually 2.5" drives *always* sound like there's something loose in them if you shake them (gently!) - you can hear the heads shifting around even on a fully functional drive. However, given that the drive was secured with electrical tape it indicates the laptop has already suffered a fall. It's possible that the drive cradle was damaged, or missing entirely (the Satellite Pros I've serviced in the past all had a metal cradle the hard drive was screwed into, which then slid into the drive bay). Anyway, unless the interface itself has been damaged, it should be fixable with a replacement hard drive (though you might want to double-check your current hard drive really is the problem before you plunk down the money on a new one - try it in a different laptop, or get one of those 2.5"-3.5" adapters and plug it into any desktop machine to see if it spins up and is detected).

Thanks for the infos, Anonymous. There was a metal sleve but the drive was taped to it. I also had the idea of testing the drive itself but I didn't know how. But now I do!