Gateway Laptop Win7 unbootable, startup repair loop

Hey everyone,

So I've got a gateway laptop here that one day was booted up and went to a boot menu screen stating there were errors with the option to launch startup repair. After doing so there has been no sucess, after a looooong process of checking for errors, it says it's unrepairable, says to exit/reboot and goes back to the same screens.

I've tried with a Win7 disc in there (vs using the recovery option built into the laptop) and still no success. I've tried restore to an earlier restore point with no success. I've tried to get into safe mode with no success and I've tried the 'last known good configuration' option with no success either!

I booted using 'spinrite' to do a deep check of the HD itself. It gets about 6-7% in and than suddenly completely shuts off! Powers off as if someone yanked the plug. The Cpu area and heatpipes underneath are VERY hot after this point so I suspect it's an overheat protection kicking in, but why it's overheating while running spinrite I can't figure out.

So I removed the HD and have connected it to my PC. It was accessible, could see the win and system folders etc. I right clicked the drive from my PC now and ran 'tools' error-checking. It makes some progress while counting sectors but eventually gets to a certain sector number and hangs there with no further progress of the error check.

At this point I'm planning to just yank any important files off of it (since it's still accessible when plugged into my PC) and reformatting/reinstalling Win7 but I am curious, these symptoms, are they synonymous with an imminent drive failure, or is it just a corrupt system?

Thanks!

Check the hard drive with the manufacturer's diagnostic tools.
Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.
Hard Drive Diagnostic Procedure

It's a 2.5" WD Blue 640GB. Tried the Data Lifeguard tools and couldn't even run a quick test as it said it couldn't access the drive. Windows 7 install disc said it can't write to this drive. Tried diskpart to fix the MBR and "clear all" (write 0's to every sector) and got I/O errors

BUT

When I removed this drive and plugged it into my PC I got the message under "disk management" that I had a disc that needs to be "initiliazed". So I did it, and my drive was now visible. Currently I'm doing a full format on it (not 'quick') and waiting to see what the result is.

At first it appeared that the drive had failed but now it seems maybe it needed initializing first?

We'll see.