Hard Drive failing... recovery options?

[Wizardry]

I searched this forum to identify my personal problem.  My HP ENVY began running slow and when I power cycled it to clear cashe and start afresh, it started locking up when rebooting.  I hit "esc" when I powered it down and up again and entered the Startup Menu.  After running System Diagnostics there, I discovered that the Hard Drive Short DST Check: FAILED, with FAILURE ID: RLXS64-7L39JE-MFPWLJ-60R303.
I know several others have had this same problem with a tech response of "Go buy a new hard drive".  My question is this... is it possible to run some type of hard drive "repair" or CHCKDSK function whereas I could identify the bad sections/areas of the HD and then repair or avoid them like was possible years ago?  If I can modify boot device options so I could boot off of the DVD drive, would something like this be an option?  Are these drives reparable? recoverable? or just replaceable?

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

99% of the time you get one of those failure ID codes, the HDD needs to be replaced.

You can try running the checkdisk utility to effect repairs, but don't be disappointed if it doesn't fix anything.

In order to boot from a DVD you need to enable legacy mode and disable secure boot in the BIOS.

See this link for the settings to change.

https://www.support.hp.com/us-en/document/c03736054/

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/c04582332

You may want to consider replacing the mechanical hard drive with a normally more durable, better performing solid state drive.  If you don't need a lot of drive space smaller capacity SSD's are very affordable today.

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-envy-17-k200-notebook-pc-series/7527536/model/77...

[Wizardry]

Hey Paul, THANK YOU greatly for the information.  Not what I wanted to hear, but needed nonetheless.  My laptop boots up to the screensaver/login screen, but doesn't go past that.  I actually did get once or twice for it to change to the password screen, acceptthe password, and then start turning wheels, but only the desktop (absent any icons) displayed.
I have already ordered a replacement SSD drive, same capacity, for replacement from Crucial.  They gave me the compatabile one for this model.  My only concern was that I have a TON of information, including archived/saved emails, on this drive that I desperately need.  I'm hoping I can hook it up to the USB port via an accompanying cable attachment they are also sending to recover some of that.  I was just thinking back to when I used to run CHKDSK on previous computers and they would automatically identify and then partition off bad sectors of the HD, and was wondering if that was still posssible.  HOW do you go about runing the chkdsk utility (Windows, no?) if it doesn't boot?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Yes, hopefully the drive is not completely dead and you will be able to use the SATA to USB cable to read the drive and copy your data off it onto the new Windows installation on the new SSD.

I believe you are correct, you run the checkdisk command following part of the instructions at the link below (using the command prompt).

https://www.windowsdigital.com/how-to-run-chkdsk-windows-10-cmd-before-boot/

Now this is the part where I don't know if it will work but at this point, you have nothing to lose by trying it.

Make the bootable W10 installation media.

Then boot from it and when you get to the main screen shown in the first picture at the link below, click on Repair your computer on the lower left side of the screen.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/windows-10-repair-your-computer-...

Then on the second screen shown, click on the Advanced Options menu.

In that menu, not shown on the above page should be a command prompt option.

From that option see if you can run the checkdisk command using the info on the first link I posted.