Hard drive not found

I have a dell 1525 which has stopped booting.

It instead makes a high pitched intermittent whir and say "internal hard drive not found", I'm not particularly hardware smart...

How can I solve this issue?

Answer

Best bet is to log a support ticket with Dell - there are a few possible causes.

If you are happy with taking it to pieces, you can check the cables are correctly seated (give the cable to the hard drive a push into the socket at each end) but most likely is that the hard drive has died - in which case you'll need a new one.