Hard Drive 1 - Primary HDD Bay

[Brent-]

My notebook stopped booting. I ran diagnostics and found that the Hard Drive 1 failed. What is the next step? Will I be able to recovery all my data from my laptop? 

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

You will have to replace the hard drive and reinstall the operating system.

It is highly unlikely you will be able to recover any data from the failed hard drive.

After you replace the hard drive, you can purchase a SATA to USB adapter, plug it into a PC and see if you can read and copy any files off the drive.

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-SATA-Drive-Adapter-Cable/dp/B00HJZJI84/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?hvadid=77...

Below is the link to the service manual for your notebook.  The HDD R & R procedure can be found in chapter 6.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04763999

You may want to consider purchasing a better performing, normally more reliable solid state drive.

I use this one for example, on two of my HP notebook PC's and two of my HP desktop PC's.

https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-240GB-Solid-State-SDSSDA-240G-G26/dp/B01F9G43WU

After you replace the hard drive, you can reinstall W10 for free as follows...

You can make a W10 USB flash drive installer with the Microsoft Media Creation Tool, using an 8 GB flash drive using another Windows PC, if your PC is not working.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

If you are asked to enter a product key during the installation process, select the 'I don't have a product key' option, and W10 will install and automatically activate once you are connected to the internet.

Here are the steps to create the W10 USB flash drive installer...

Select Download tool now, and select Run.

If you agree to the license terms, select Accept.

On the What do you want to do? page, select Create installation media for another PC, and then select Next.

Select the language, edition, and architecture (64-bit or 32-bit) for Windows 10. You want 64 bit.

Select which media you want to use:

USB flash drive. Plug in a blank USB flash drive with at least 8GB of space. Any content on the flash drive will be deleted.

Then you can reinstall the drivers and available software from the PC's support page.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-15-f300-notebook-pc-series-touch/8961458/model/1...

[Brent-]

Thank you very much for that information. It was more then I expected and extremely helpful!!! 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.