Dying HD, won't boot, even from W7 recovery disk!

Hi there,

Am writing this on my phone seeing as I cannot use my laptop any more so please bear with me!

Ok here is a potted history of the problems I have had:

After numerous hard resets due to my 2010 Dell Inspiron Laptop overheating or crashing, I discovered through the SMART utility that there were 14 sectors 'pending'. During a mass transfer of photos etc from my camera to picasa, it crashed again due to overheating. Thereafter, the HD light would permanently remain on when I tried to open the folder containing the photos I was transferring. This indicated to me that there was some corruption or similar defect in there at that location....

Sensing imminent failure I copied everything I could think of that was of value to an external HD. I couldn't do a full image or full backup as it was slightly too small for it all.

I then did chkdsk at startup, followed by chkdsk /r. This promptly found several bad sectors and attempted to repair them but this then proceeded to crash, hanging for hours at the same place with the usual constant HD activity. I then had to turn it off eventually as it had obviously not worked.

Turning it back on, I was presented with the 'boot device not found' error.

I then tried to use the Windows 7 recovery disk to try startup repair but after a very slow and drawn out loading process this failed on installation of drivers by giving a login error. I couldn't even get to the main recovery options menu. I had to then cold reset again.

Upon starting up again I was given the 'a read error occurred - press ctrl alt del to restart' error.

Now when I try to boot from the Windows 7 recovery cd or the Windows 7 installation cd it goes through the process of loading, with the starting windows screen, but eventually all I get is a black screen with a white cursor and that's it. No more HD activity, nothing. I have left it for 3 hours in that state to see if anything happens but no.

Can anyone please think of any more possible ways forward? I am completely stumped by this one!!!

Thanks.
H

badger906 said:

youve answered your own question, the hard drive is knackered. theres no way to save it other than spending some pennies on a new one and saying farewell to your old drive while hitting it with a hammer (as im a security concerned person this is not only fun and stress releaving its also a sound way to protect data!)

Hi there

A Hammer is a great "Conversion Tool" for converting Bytes into Bits !!!

Cheers
jimbo

If your data is important, don't hit with a hammer just yet :) Last week I had my internal hard drive died on me, while my computer did not recognize it,(it wasnt my c drive, but rather a second internal drive that stored all my data) I ended up removing it and taking it to the local computer store.

They placed the drive on this docking device ( which utilizes USB and is viewed almost like a thumb drive) and they were able to see all my data. It cost me $50.00 but they were able to save my data.

Just a thought if you don't have backups.

edit... whoops I should have read your post closer, looks like you were able to save your data... OK... please proceed with the hammer :)