SMART hard disk check has detected immenent failure Hard Disk(301)

[graberweg]

A friend of mine handed me his laptop asking if I could get it working again and when I tried turning it on to see what was wrong, a black screen loads mentioning SMART hard disk check detected imminent failure. I have no clue what even lead to this happening but does this message basically indicate the hard drive must be replaced or could restoring to factory settings fix this? I tried getting into windows but it just gets to the login page and won't let me sign in at all. I also worry if i replace the hard drive, it will not have an operating system on it so then I'd have to spend the $40 + shipping for all the pre-installed software with operating system to restore this laptop or is there another way?

[graberweg]

I also already pulled out the hard drive and do see the recovery partition seems accessible via another computer when connected with my SATA to usb adapter but I can't access anything on the operating system partition.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Before replacing the hard drive, make a bootable USB recovery drive using the HP cloud recovery tool that will reinstall W10, the drivers and the software that originally came with the notebook.

You will need another Windows PC running W7 64 bit or newer, and a 32 GB USB flash drive to make the recovery media.

Here is an info link for how to use the utility...

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10, 7) | HP® Customer Support

If that doesn't work, you will need to install a new hard drive.

I recommend that you replace the 2.5" mechanical hard drive with a better performing 2.5" solid state drive (SSD).

Below is the link to the service manual.

HP Notebook PC (AMD) * Models: 15-ba100 – 15-ba199 * Models: 15-ba000 – 15-ba099 * Models: 15-bf100 ...

You can also clean install W10 by making a bootable installation flash drive using the media creation tool.

Download Windows 10 (microsoft.com)

Since the W10 license/product key is in the BIOS, you don't need a product key to reinstall W10.

[AndyStuart87]

Sometimes S.M.A.R.T error doesn’t mean that your hard drive has been corrupted. Sometimes it occurs because may be it detected any issue in your drive. In addition, this error could also be due to a fault in the systems hardware, inappropriate configuration, loose connections, etc. To fix the error you can try the below DIY methods:

1. Check the SMART status
2. Run an error check
3. Run CHKDSK scan
4. Initialize the disk

Here, I will suggest you to check out the below blog that explaining all the measures to check the health of any hard disk.

https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/how-to-check-hard-disk-health/

Hope it helps!

[graberweg]

I ended up downloading and creating the HP Cloud Recovery Tool and wiped out the hard drive and performed a factory reset. After every single restart however I would still continue to see the black screen with the SMART hard disk check detected imminent failure message. I chose to ignore to see what happens and I somehow "successfully" installed Windows 10 but upon uninstalling some pre-installed software, Windows needed a restart which lead me back here because the hard drive is just crashing and unable to load the OS. At last check, the laptop has been stuck on a prompt stating it is scanning and repairing the drive for the past hour showing 100% done but just stuck (doing nothing?).  Also when I run the Hard Drive Extensive test prior to loading the OS, it always errors out saying Hard Drive Short DST Check: FAILED. I guess its safe to assume the hard disk is no longer usable? I'm thinking of replacing the hard disk with a 2.5 inch 1TB SSD to replace this doomed hard drive.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Yes, you will need to replace the hard drive at this point and yes, as I posted yesterday, I recommend that you replace the 2.5" mechanical hard drive with a 2.5" SSD.

I recommend this model because IMHO, it offers the best performance for the price.

Amazon.com: Western Digital 1TB WD Blue 3D NAND Internal PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm, Up to 5...

If you don't need 1 TB of drive space, this is the 500 GB model...

Amazon.com: Western Digital 500GB WD Blue 3D NAND Internal PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s, 2.5"/7mm, Up to...

[graberweg]

Thank you so much for your help. The laptop belongs to my friend's daughter and she uses it for school and recreation I imagine. Her old hard disk was 1000 MB in size so I think I'll stick with replacing it with a 1 TB drive plus this laptop is so old so I think going with a cheap-ish SSD as you suggested is the best way to resolve this. 🙂

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

A SSD will breathe new life into the PC.

That was very kind of you to fix your friend's daughter's notebook.