Satellite Laptops :: all other models

[#1]

Hello, my Satellite L355D-S7819 just stopped working.  It would not reboot, would not go into safemode.  I pulled the hard drive, put it in an external enclosure and booted it on my desktop computer.  It recognized the drive but would not open it, could not virus scan it.

There was nothing that was not backed up on the drive, so I decided to restore the computer to the factory settings.  I re-installed the drive in the laptop, set it to boot from the DVD and put in the Toshiba factory disk.

The first time Itried restoring to factory settings it took forever and wound up freezing on Initializing the partition. 

The second time I tried, I erased the drive completely.  Then when Itried to re-install to factory, it ran much faster, but it has frozen in exactly the same place.

Everything looks great, but when it gets to "initializing the partition, please wait", that's what I do, wait.  It simply freezes there.

Any suggestions?  I am wondering if the hard drive itself has gone bad.  Should I be getting a new drive and starting from scratch?  Any advice is appreciated!

Thanks

[#2]

1. Determine what brand of hard drive it is.
2. Go to that manufacturers support site
3. Download the Diagnostic CD ISO image and burn it to a blank cd according to instructions
4. Boot to that diagnostic disk and run the most exhaustive test

This should tell you if the drive is bad or not.