Smart Hard drive failure on HP Pavilion DV9700

[JOHN_95]

I am getting the following message on bootup: S.M.A.R.T failure predicted on Hard Disk 4: ST9120822AS - (S3)
WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may by immeninet.

When I run hard drive diagnostics it fails immediately with ---test status -#10008 replace hard drive

The laptop was brought in 2008.

 

[fzabkar]

Your drive probably has an excessive number of bad sectors. Try a comprehensive SMART diagnostic. Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.

HD Sentinel (DOS / Windows / Linux):
http://www.hdsentinel.com/

HDDScan for Windows:
http://hddscan.com/

See this article for SMART info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

 

[hang-the-9]

Not sure what you are looking for with the post, replace the drive. Not in a week, now. Unless you're angry at your data and don't want to keep any of it. While the drive is still working OK, copy your files over to another drive for backups.

I would not even try to run any more scans on the thing, you already have two different places where it tells you the drive is going bad, doing anything else to it will just increase the chances it will fail.

 

[JOHN_95]

The problem is I cant even get past the boot up. It fails right away. I was hoping there was a way to maybe disable SMART to allow me to boot up the laptop to back up my data. Any info will help. Thanks

 

[hang-the-9]

You can try using a Linux boot disk, that will enable you to at least see if the drive is working at all, although the SMART check is in BIOS which should be running before you can even boot off anything else.

Get an external USB enclosure (for a 2.5" drive since it's a laptop), see if another computer will read the drive at all though that.

Is it making any grinding, clicking, metal whining sounds? A drive that is good will just have a smooth whirling sound, nothing sharp.

 

[JOHN_95]

The hard drive does not even spin up on boot up. I also do not hear the fan turning on. After power on is hit. The error message comes up almost immediately. I try hitting "F1" to continue. However, it does not let me. The best I can do is get into bios.

 

[hang-the-9]

The hard drive does not even spin up on boot up. I also do not hear the fan turning on. After power on is hit. The error message comes up almost immediately. I try hitting "F1" to continue. However, it does not let me. The best I can do is get into bios.

Hm, well it seems like the laptop is dead in the water without a new drive. May as well pick up a new one, get the old drive in a USB enclosure, or plug it into a desktop as a secondary drive to see if it will work at all.

If you are lucky (for your data that is), the issue is not with the drive but with the motherboard or drive connections at least. Of course that is much more expensive to fix if that's the case, but you won't lose any files.

 

[JOHN_95]

Thanks for all your help. I am going to see if the drive is really bad. I have a funny feeling it is the motherboard. When I run diagnostics. It fails immediately. It is almost like the drive is not getting any power.