Boot Device Not Found

[pclark99]

17" HP Pavilion Notebook (2016)

Error:
"Boot Device Not Found
Please install an operating system on your hard drive
Hard Drive (3F0)"

Rebooted, hit <ESC> to reach the BIOS Startup Menu, selected <F2> for Hardware Diagnostics and ran the Hard Drive Quick Test:
"Smart Check : Passed
Short DST : Failed
Failure ID: M8A821 - 7SQB4S - MFPWLK - 60R203"

(BTW, there is no mention of Intel Rapid Technology anywhere in the BIOS entries, neither in "Main" nor "System Configuration.")

Rebooted, hit <ESC> to reach the BIOS Startup Menu, selected <F12> for System Recovery and ran Startup Repair.  Startup Repair reported that it was unable to fix the problem. 

Selected Command Prompt and ran "chkdsk /f/r" from the command line. Chkdsk ran for just over 3 hours and marked some sectors as bad. Upon completion, ran
"System Recovery" which reported that it was unable to find a recovery point (although a recovery point on partition drive 😧 is captured weekly.

Shut down the system. This would prove to be the last time that I was able to reach the <F12> System Recovery option from the Bios Startup Menu. Can still reach <F1> System Information, <F2> Hardware Diagnostics, <F9> Boot Options and <F10> BIOS Configuration, but selecting <F12 System Recovery> results in a long pause
(ten minutes or so), then the HP logo appears above the circling dots. Once let the logo & circling dots run overnight (8 hours) but it never gets to System Recovery. A shame... would like to get back to that command prompt to back up my data.

Using a friend's computer, went to the Microsoft site and created a bootable USB thumb drive with Media Creator. Also created two additional bootable USB drives using the opensource utility "Rufus." One of the Rufus bootable drives was created with a Windows 10 ISO file, the other with Free DOS. The HP Pavillion will boot with the
Rufus/DOS thumb drive but is essentially useless as neither the hard drive not the other USB ports are recognized. Neither the bootable drive from MS Media Creator nor the Rufus ISO drive will boot the notebook - each produces the HP logo over the circling dots after several minutes.

I've tried to use these bootable drives under slightly different BIOS settings (Legacy Enabled/Disabled, USB boot drive listed as number 1 or number 2 with the native hard drive) to no avail. Would appreciate guidance that will allow system recovery but, if that is not possible, would appreciate guidance that will permit data recovery.