A few days ago a friend started to have some problems with his laptop as it randomly does not detect the hard disk. The usual suspects would be a hard disk failure or IDE cable or IDE controller problem. On a desktop it is easy to check the IDE cable or the IDE controller just by testing with a different cable or just by connecting the hard disk on a different IDE but since it has problems with his laptop he can not do these checks so he’s only option was to run some tests to check if his hard disk is failing and hope it is not the IDE controller on the motherboard.