Broken HDD or something else??

Hi

I have a friends laptop, which he brought to me saying his laptop would not load into windows, Its windows vista it gets to the loading bar then black screen for more than a hour, thats as long as i have have left it. We he said his son dropped it. Now i personally thing it could be a HDD problem, I have tried windows advanced boot options, safe mode does the same, repair does same, and im just about to buy a replacement HDD. I even tried to install a new version of windows and after the loading screen there it also crashes. Can i take the laptop SATA HDD and put that in my desktop to run tests?( i know sata will fit but im unsure about power?) Because he dropped the laptop i just want feedback of other people because i dont want to tell him to buy a new HDD and still have a problem.

 

Yes you can plug the laptop sata hdd into your desktop and run any test you want.
There is no difference in sata power connectors the hard drives themselves internally use the right voltage.