My laptop isn’t finding the hard drive

@clinton65 sounds like your computer cannot find an OS. You need a bootable disk so that your computer can start. Try to download an executable Live version of one of the many Linux distros. I use Puppy Linux whenever I try to recover data from HDD. Once you have that disk your computer most likely will boot up. Then you can try and see if it allows you to access your HDD. If so you know that it is an OS issue, not a hardware issue. If not, you are having a failed HDD. This may all sound like a lot but it is not. Just remain systematic and do one things at a time. Of course you want to check your computer's BIOS to see if the drive still shows up at all. You will also have to change the boot order so that it boots from Optical Drive/USB drive etc. Information about your BIOS setup etc. can be found on here