HD bad sectors, now cannot boot even from recovery disk!

[Hairyfox]

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 W7 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 W7 recovery cd or the W7 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

 

[nooruddin76]

can it be that ur memory has gone bad?..try to do memory test

 

[Computer0304]

You can try transferring it to another PC. You can either connect it internally or externally. Externally would be easier since you would not have to go into the computer and risk breaking something else. You will need to get a SATA to USB adapter and borrow a computer if you do not have another.

 

[Hairyfox]

Hiya, I did a memory test which came back fine. The problem only lies within the HD I think.

If I transferred it to another PC, would it be able to be read do you think?

 

[Computer0304]

It is possible that there is a problem in the motherboard SATA port.

 

[Hairyfox]

Oh OK, which diagnostics checks would I need to run on it to find out?

Thanks,

 

[Computer0304]

Just try connecting the HDD through a SATA to USB adapter on another computer and try copying your important files to a new drive.