Imminent Hard Disk issue

[Sluggy1]

Hi,

Panic on board, impossible for me to restart my TOUCHSMART 600 PC, I can only see a black screen with the following message "imminent hard disk failure". See below:

And when I try to reboot it (Clt+Alt+Supp) it comes back to the same or after a long session of "automatic repair", I can see the following message:

And even when I press any key, the same message repeats again and again.

I fear my hard disk is dead, is there any way to have a last chance to save all my files and pictures I filed during about 10 years ??

Please help !! 🙏🙏🙏

[WAWood]

@Sluggy1 

First off, are you really running Vista -- or did you just choose that because you do not know which OS version you are using?

Second, if the drive is really the original and is indeed 10 years old, did you not do any recent backups of the information on it?

Third, The more you use it, the less likely you'll be able to recover anything on it

Your best bet for recovering data now is to do the following:
1) Remove the hard drive from the old PC
2) If you have a desktop PC with a spare hard drive connector, then connect the old drive to that -- both the power cable and the data cable. If you only have a notebook PC, then you will need to purchase a USB-to-Hard Driver adapter kit (like the one illustrated below)

3) Connect the old drive to a working PC,using that adapter if it is a laptop
4) Try to retrieve the files and folders you want to save from the old drive and copy them to the new PC.

If this does not work, then you need to do the following:
1) Download and install this utility on a working PC http://www.majorgeeks.com/news/story/recover_data_in_3_steps_with_minitool_power_data_recovery_free_...
2) Run the data recovery utility to see what can be retrieved from the old drive.

If that tool does not find what you need, an alternative is Recuva http://www.piriform.com/recuva

And, if that does not work well, the best tool out there is this one, but only the trial version is free http://www.file-recovery.com/

[Sluggy1]

Hello @WAWood,

Many thanks for your quick reply and help, very appreciated though!

When I bought my HP Desktop PC over 10 years ago, I had Windows 7 on it but I remember having updated  it with I think Vista. Is there a way to verify it ? Is it relevant to explain my situation with this "imminent hard disk failure" ? 

I'm gonna follow your advice and steps but is it easy to recognise and remove the hard disk from this HP TouchSmart pc ? Sorry for this question but I'm kind of a rookie in computers! 😉

Isn't there any way to repair this tired hard drive by entering the Bios?

Many thanks for you help,

Best,

Ludovic

[Sluggy1]

Hi WAWood,

Following your email and recommendations, I followed all your steps and bought this adapter:

After making the right connections (I guess my Hard Disk is a SATA Device not a PATA/IDE device, right ?), I could identify the HP Hard Disk on my laptop a few minutes but while loading it suddenly stopped and an error message popped up.

Afterwards, I tried to download the different softwares you listed for me but two out of three are only DEMO version (not free trial version) and the RECUVA software was not able to identify my Hard Disk.

Does it mean my Hard Disk is really dead and unreadable or I really need to use the appropriate software to have a chance to recover my files (mostly word/excel documents and pictures/videos) ?

Thank again for any further help you can provide,

Best,

Ludovic