Need help: non-system disk or disk error hp 8530w Elitebook

I just borrowed my laptop to a friend and he said when he tried to boot it up he go this message.

The message I get when restarting is non-system disk or disk error, press a key to continue over and over.

When I click f10 before boot up there is a harddisk test option, where it says Hard Disk test failed, no disk installed.

So is it either the harddisk or the motherboard thats a problem? AFAIK nothing new was installed leading up to this. The computer is no longer under warranty.

Help a girl out please!

 

Hard drive failure. Requires a new hard drive.

Did you happen to notice any issue before this event? Random crashes? Lost data?

Alternatively, are there any USB flash disks plugged in?

 

No, no usb flash disks.

My friend has the exact same computer, could I use his recovery disks if I install a new HD? also which HD would you recommend, bare in mind I have a farily large (1 tb) external hdd.

 

Yes you can.

What size did you have in there before or what size to you need?
How much are you looking to spend or what is your limit?

500GB 7200RPM drives, 640GB 5400RPM drives retail for under $100. They are the fastest hard drives you can get.

Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital are all good names.

Or you can go SSD for super fast speed. 60-80GB SSDs will run you about $200 give or take.

 

Thanks for the swift reply.

I have an old Thinkpad X40 and according to

Category:X40 - ThinkWiki

it has a 1.8" HD. Could I swap that one onto the HP and just power up to make sure it really is the hd? and then put it back so the X40 works again?

edit: the 500gb is more than enough, which one would you recommend? and is heat an issue it gets/got quite hot.

 

No that would be the wrong form factor and wrong interface(PATA). You need a SATA HDD.

Heat can be an issue but would need specific temps to say if it is too high. When you get your computer up and running again, D/L the following program which measures heat: CPUID

As for which HDD to get:

500GB:

Seagate Momentus 7200 FDE.2 ST9500421AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive

HITACHI Travelstar 7K500 HD20500 IDK/7K 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive

320GB:

Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9320423AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive

HITACHI Travelstar 7K320 HTS723232L9A360 (0A57547) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive

Not listed in order of preference. You can google the description to find the best price and vendor.

 

thnx so much

 

just to close the thread, it was indeed the harddisk that went belly up.

 

Thanks for reporting back.

Any other questions, feel free to come back and ask.

Best wishes going forward.