Is my hard drive defective?

so my brother's Toshiba Satellite got hit with a virus, and started restarting itself. I put the reboot CD and select "recover to out of box state" and while it was recovering, bam-- I got an error message that read something along the lines of "error:" followed by a code number. I google the error code number and according to a bunch of links regarding this same error code, my hard drive is defective and needs to be replaced. so what does this sound like to you pc experts? is it indeed defective? or could there be something wrong with my reboot CD?

personally I'm leaning more toward a defective hard drive. I went as far as to opening the laptop and removing it's guts and parts and found no damage or unplugged hardware. any help would be appreciated.

also, if I go ahead and replace the hard drive with another compatable one, what are my chances of this solving the problem? I really hope it's not a motherboard problem and that the whole laptop is shot. :S

thanks.

Test it using Seagate's Seatools, download here: http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

Its possible the Master Boot Record of the hard drive may have got corrupted. If that is the case, it can be fixed without having to buy a new hard drive.

Could you better describe the virus you had? this is a known virus in its self.

I doubt your harddrive is defective, but you never know.

Its possible the Master Boot Record of the hard drive may have got corrupted. If that is the case, it can be fixed without having to buy a new hard drive.

shred

Could you better describe the virus you had? this is a known virus in its self.

I doubt your harddrive is defective, but you never know.

adam0926

I don't know the type of virus I had exactly, but he was uhm... downloading some games... and right after that, the desktop items disappeared and we kept getting an "internet explorer" type error message and then it started restarting on its own. hope this helps.

[QUOTE="shred"]

Its possible the Master Boot Record of the hard drive may have got corrupted. If that is the case, it can be fixed without having to buy a new hard drive.

SailorHiiragi

http://forums.techarena.in/hardware-peripherals/1209233.htm