Hard Drive Failure Possibility?

Hello everyone, I have a HP Desktop P6130Y computer and it has been giving me trouble since day 1. I have fixed most of my problems, but I need reassurance on this next problem. I strongly believe my hard drive is failing. I have tried turning on the pc and it appears to have a boot hang issue. It just freezes up at the Starting Windows black screen on Windows 7.

With that being said, I have attempted to boot into safe mode and I am unable to do so, it just freezes after it loads up the drivers. I have also tried getting into the HP System Recovery but it just freezes.

Everything pretty much freezes up, so I decided to run the HP Diagnostic tool, I have found this error:

ERROR: BIOHD-8

ERROR: A smart test failed on the drive ST3750528A5 (9VPOF93G)


Does this mean my hard drive is failing? If so, what hard drive would be a good one to install? I was looking into a Western Digital 750GB 7200 RPM, 64mb Cached SATA drive. Thank you in advance, -Rolly32

 

how old is the PC?

 

http://hddguru.com/software/2005.10.02-MHDD/

Use this link to download,create iso cd and scan your hdd with this.This is probably the best software for scaning hdd's and discovering bad sectors and delays.NOTE:Hdd must be connected on SATA 1,otherwise the software might not discover your hard drive.

 

This desktop is about a couple of years old. I believe I purchased this computer in late 2009 very early 2010.

Thank you Goran.P, I will look intro this.

 

I'll just add to the others responses that I think you are correct the HD is failing. It appears to be a Seagate drive so their SeaTools diagnostic application would also verify a problem.

If you can't boot into Windows then you would have to burn an ISO file to CD, to boot to DOS environment to run the program.

My experience is once you get a bad SMART status the drive will fail. When is the only question. For a drive that contains the Operating System I replace it immediately rather then live with uncertainty of not knowing when the system will no longer boot.

The Western Digital drive would be a suitable replacement.

 

I forgot to mention if your F8 (safe mode options) screen has a Repair Computer option, you could try that and from there go to advanced options and choose command prompt. In command prompt you could use the chkdsk c: /r command to try and fix file system errors enough to get into Windows at least a few more times.

If you have the Repair Computer option it would probably start at screen #4 in this guide http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/windows-7-recovery-environment-command-prompt/

You would check that your Win7 "location" is indeed C: but if different letter then substitute that letter in the chkdsk command above.

 

Hi sach, I forgot to mention that I have also tried to load the option under the Safe mode choices. I have tried "Fix My Computer" option, which is the first on the list, even at that, it would say Windows is loading files with a grey progress bar. Once that bar fades away, the screen just stays solid black. -Rolly32

 

It definitely sounds like your HD is bad. You've tried to boot from the OS partition, the recovery partition and the "Repair" option is often on its own partition and all three fail. That seems to signal a lot of corruption on various areas of the HD not just one single partition.

I think SeaTools will just tell you the HD is bad. (I'm not familiar with SeaTools as I usually buy WD drives, but I think it is fairly quick to say a HD is beyond repair. Unfortunately, it doesn't consider HD from store bought computers to be covered in warranty and tells you to deal with the manufacturer of the PC (HP). I've never heard back if anyone actually gets a replacement by contacting the PC manufacturer. I've never bothered.)

My only concern in replacing the HD is that the PC seems to have come with Vista and you are running Win7. How did you get to Win7? If you used an upgrade disc they want to see an old version of Windows on the HD before allowing the upgrade. You would need HP Restore CD/DVDs to put Vista on the new drive then upgrade to Win7 if you used an upgrade disc to get to Win7.

 

Hi Sach, thank you for your quick responses. I did upgrade to Windows 7 because I was having multiple issues on Vista. I am currently not planning on trying to contact the manufacture.Although If I do purchase a HD, it will be a Western Digital HD, I am fairly confident in replacing the HD myself since I have a toolkit that I have purchased last year that I am eager to try out :-D

I am a little confused by the last paragraph in your post. Once I install the new HD, I must reinstall vista before doing a windows 7 upgrade? Or could I just directly install Windows 7 on the Hard Drive? I have never replaced a HD but I have knowledge on what to do and not to do while installing the HD physically, but I must backup all my drivers and reinstall them when replacing the HD correct?

I might not be able to backup data since I cannot even get past the Windows is Starting screen, so I might just have to find universal drivers or so.

 

I also want to back up my information. Although I cannot log into my computer, can I run a Ubuntu Live CD and create a backup from there?


I was looking into this link: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/


Is there a better tool out there that I can use to backup my files without logging into windows? Thank you in advance