Short DST failed

[Gasper20]

Passed SMART test

Failed Short DST

Failure ID: M0F7GC-8PMAJJXD7URG-60RA03

I am unable to start Windows and am afraid of losing my documents, school notes, ect. Is there a way to recover the data from the hard drive?

Can I use the HP cloud recovery tool to create W10 on a flash drive and boot from that on BIOS? Will that allow windows to start again and give me the option to back up files from the hard drive? Or should I send it in to a company that can recovery hard drive data which I heard can cost thousands of dollars  -_-?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

The cloud recovery tool won't help.  It will completely erase the contents of the drive.

Remove the drive and before you spend a fortune to see if a company can recover any data...there are no guarantees this can be done, buy a USB to SATA hard drive cable.  Plug one end into the failed hard drive and the other end into a working PC's USB port, and see if you can read/copy any files from the drive to the PC.

Something like this...

Amazon.com: SATA to USB Cable, Benfei USB 3.0 to SATA III Hard Driver Adapter w/UASP Compatible for ...

Below is the link to the service manual where you can find the hard drive removal and replacement procedure.

HP 15 Laptop PC (Intel)HP 15g Laptop PCHP 15q Laptop PC Maintenance and Service Guide

You may want to consider replacing the 2.5" mechanical hard drive with a better performing 2.5" solid state drive (SSD).

Then you can use the cloud recovery tool with another Windows PC running W7 64 bit or newer to create a bootable USB recovery drive that will reinstall W10, the drivers and the software that originally came with your notebook on the new drive.

[Gasper20]

I brought my laptop to Geek squad and they took it a part and tried to access it externally but it was not successful. So next step would be sending it off for a specialist? Anything else I can try?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Unfortunately, nothing I can think of.

[Gasper20]

How often does this happen? Does it usually occur at a certain laptop age? Are there steps I can take to prevent this from happening again?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

The only suggestion I can offer would be to back up your files regularly so you don't have the same problem with data recovery that you have now.

There is no telling when a hard drive will fail. 

They may last 6 months, or 10 years depending on usage, how much heat the PC produces...any number of circumstances.

There is an old saying..."it is not a matter of if a hard drive will fail, but a matter of when."

Once a month, I copy all of my user profile folders to a portable hard drive, and I also use the free Macrium Reflect software to create a system image backup of the entire hard drive.

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

The software also has you make a bootable rescue DVD or USB flash drive that you can boot from to access the system image stored on your portable hard drive.

That way I am covered two ways...I can use the system image to restore everything on the hard drive in the event of a system crash or problem, or if the hard drive fails, I can restore the image on a new hard drive as long as it is the same capacity.

Since I also have stored the individual user files, even if the system image fails to restore, I still have my files, and I can clean install W10 on the PC and copy my user profile files to the new installation, and create a new system image.