I have a WD1600BEVS - 60RSTO 2.5 inch HDD that came with my HP Laptop. It wasnt booting and since it was old, i took it to a friend of mine who said he'd try to repair it. I already had a 250GB replacement drive, so i thought i'd risk repairing this one. He messed up the read/write heads. can i buy a new replacement head from somewhere, please tell me what to do. There is some data i want to recover.. and i also want to use the drive again. please help.

G7 2270us
it's 2012 pc
one of 3 cables you pulled during the hinge change
killed it. all are fragile and take skills to use.
they have locks and can be broken easy, ask how.

backing up has many paths.
ill list them all are covered online zillions if sites.
1: to the cloud oops PC dead,cant.
2: thumb USB drive, cant. dead.
3: to DVD or CD burner , cant. dead.
4, move HDD to other PC direct.
5: MOVE HDD TO OTHER pc INDIRECT usb.
6: MOVE HDD To a nice, hdd 2.5" external USB chassis.

#4 is the most easy, dead pc. G7
you are attempting to use 5.
and id bet that USB adapter does not support VISTA.

VISTA is dead now, for 1 full year.
VISTA has drivers of old things,
IS your vista online, it must be or it cant get to 99% of the plug and play drivers at MS.com.
ok, is it online? means web connected this VISTA PC.
if you plug in that new USB device, to vista
it needs to get a driver from Microsoft driver servers. and they dont have new drivers there now.
for all new USB things, and that is becuaSE
ms DOES NOT SUPPORT VISTA NOW.
SO WHY NOT USE W7./8/10 MACHINE TO DO THAT
AND BE Web connected
or do method 4 above and only costs $2 for Sata CABLE. DIRECT.?

You shouldn't have any problems. The computer uses SATA drives and the drive is SATA and is also a 2.5" laptop HDD. Make sure that you have a way to install an OS , etc

CLEAR CMOS IS EASYEST WAY.

Fogit it - you are fcked.

Only alternative you have at this juncture is to avail yourself of a data recovery service at great expense.

Sometimes a repair operation or diagnostic test on a finicky drive could permanently trash the unit or make it worse. That is apparently what happened to your drive.

In the future this incident should impress on you the fact that a hard drive backup of important data is always a must. All hard drives from the moment of manufacture start to die - we just do not know when!

The hard drive is damaged and beyond repair. To get your laptop operating again, purchase a new hard drive, install Windows on the hard drive, plus the laptop's device drivers and your programs.

here's some ideas:
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I fixed my ps3!! All you need is a friend with a ps3!! Swap the hdd's and boot up your friends ps3, format the hdd, put it back in your ps3 and you may need to format it again.
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I tried to fix my friend's PS3 HDD that way in mine...it still gave an error every time he booted up his PS3. At that point I stuck the PS3 HDD in my laptop, booted from a Windows CD and fully formatted it that way...stuck it back in his machine...used it to format....finally got his stuff going. Took a little extra time but no problems since.

any news on this? I have the EXACT same problem.

Hi there , yes it is mother board problem. But $399 is really too expensive for 2 years old laptop. I suggest you buy a new updated laptop & take out the HDD from the old laptop. Visit a service center & tell them you want to make that HDD for external using purpose. They will fix it for you & maximum 30 $ they charged for it. So you get a updated laptop & your all old data with external HDD. Now why i suggest you for a new laptop. If you pay 399$ for motherboard then you can use it. But again if you feel some thing wrong in other parts then you go for buy that. Finally when you make a total cost you will see a new laptop prize. Hope you understand my meaning.
Thanks &waiting for your feedback.

Try your old HDD in it and see if that works. If it does work then nothing is damaged except your DVD drive/Controller. Try putting the new HDD in another computer, installing windows then putting it back in the HP. If all else fails then flash the bios with an updated image and see if that rectifies the problem.