Yup, I had this too. HDD failure.
I was able to recover mine by doing the following:
Install Acronis WD Edition on my main PC (most Dell laptops have used WD HDDs for the last ~6 years)
Remove HDD from laptop and install as a secondary drive into your primary PC.
If Windows, doesn't detect the "dead" HDD, enter Disk Manager and see if you can initialize your "dead" laptop HDD
If your system doesn't recognize it, stop right here.
If it is recognized, back up your essential data ASAP and then continue below
Buy new WD laptop HDD.
Plug both the laptop HDDs into your main system as secondary drives
Boot your main system ensuring it boots from your primary HDD instead of either of the laptop HDDs
Enter My Computer to make sure all three drives are detected (primary C:, the new laptop drive and the drive that won't work in your laptop)
Start Acronis True Image
Click Clone
Follow the steps to clone the entire "dead" drive onto the new drive
Install the new drive with the cloned system image into your laptop and voila.
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