Dell N7110 Not booting up!

I take that back, it doesn't show in the BIOS.  But I will say that earlier, I was using the system after many reboots  and while I was backing up some very important files, the screen turned black and wouldn't come back.  that's when I rebooted and the clicking noises started and eventually it just wouldn't boot no matter what. 

and this is what's so frustrating, that it was working atleast and just all of a sudden, the hard drive is not being visible? I just restarted a minute ago to see if it helps and while atleast the drive made some more clicking noises, It still didn't boot the system to windows. 

Are you sure the Toshiba entry refers to the hard drive and not the DVD drive?

Are you seeing a 2000-0151 error?

Go into the BIOS setup (F2 at powerup).  If you don't see the hard drive, unplug the system, remove the battery and remove and reinstall the drive (service manual below).

If that gets the drive to be seen, run a full diagnostic on it - if it doesn't, the drive is toast and you'll need a new 2.5" SATA notebook drive, 7- or 9.5 mm in height.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/product-support/product/INSPIRON-17R-N7110/manuals?c=us

Yeah, I apologize.  it wasn't the HDD i was looking at.  it said TSSTCorp next to SATA ODD and I see that's the DVD drive now.  Next to Fixed HDD it says "None" in the bios.

Try disconnecting and reconnecting the drive.  That's a last-ditch effort that, if it doesn't get the drive to show up, means the drive has failed and  you'll need a new one.

Okay,

First I just want to thank you EJN63 for all of your help.  I truly appreciate it.

I also want to say that I did disassemble the laptop in order to get to the hard drive and it did seem to work for about a minute.  I was able to log into windows this time but during start up windows went through a recovery/check disk process.  Next, while backing up my files, the hard drive started making the clicking noises again and things went black.  This time, I didn't even get a little indication window or anything, no taskbar, nothing.  I restarted and again, the hard drive was not recognized. 

Now here is where I found something very odd:  In all my frustration, I decided to call tech support to see if any help was available.  While on the phone, I decided to get my service tag, so I turned the laptop off, turned it upside down, and gave the service tag to the rep that asked me for it.  He said, okay let's just try to restart it one more time and when I turned on the machine, voila! it recognized the drive and went through check disk again.  this time, it did some correction and I was able to log into windows.  I immediately backed up all of my important files and just went I finished, the drive started making clicking noises again and the roller coaster started again.

I figured I wasted enough time, lets see if I can redo everything I did before and I did which was turned the pc off, flip it upside down, press a bit on the bottom area where the hard drive is, and then turn on the machine.  Weirdly enough it worked.  I went through this cycle two more times when the drive died out on me.  The very last time, I checked if Seagate, the maker of the drive, had any tools, and found they had two tools: SeaTools for windows and SeaTools for DOS.  I used the windows tool and it could not even perform a diagnostic test because it said it had found some error which required me to use seatools for dos (it's a liveCD).  But when I tried to run that, the hard drive would not be recognized.  Funny enough,  the laptop now boots into windows if I go through the method above but SeaTools says there's no hard drive detected.  So I ran the Dell Pre-Assessment diagnostic test and that seemed to recognize the drive or so I think since there's no error message yet.  Now for the last hour and half using the thorough test, I been running the diagnostic.  It's still going and blinking here and there and I have no way of knowing if the program is actually finding anything. 

I'm going to remain hopeful until I find a solution but man, this is one crazy and tiresome weekend.  Wish Dell was more helpful.

I immediately backed up all of my important files and just went I finished, the drive started making clicking noises again and the roller coaster started again.

     I don't usually punch in when ejn's working on a thread with a member since he's a solid authority re: Hard Drives, but I found it irresistible to mention that YOU DID THE RIGHT THING!!! and Just In Time! That clicking sound is affectionately referred to as the "Tick of Death" and in textbook form ...toward the end of your backup as the drive became thermally intolerant...I don't need to remind you. GOOD FOR YOU taking advantage of your stroke of luck. Too many people assume that if it starts "working again" something divine must have happened and go on as if there's no real pressure to back up precious data! Nicely Done!