What to do with a Self-Test Failed HDD?

[Matthias_]

Hi,

Yesterday i opened my HP Probook 450 G1 laptop to do some work and was surprised with a BSOD and reboot loop. I thought it could be something with windows, so i inserted my windows 7 disk to attempt recovery/repair or even fresh install. But everytime i click on any option the screen freezes, mouse is movable but nothing happens for almost an hour.

So i booted Ubuntu from a usb drive i have for emergencies, and i was able to launch ubuntu and even access my HDD.
I'm still a noob at linux distros but i was able to open up "Disks" from the utilities and found out that the HDD self-test failed - whichever that means.
I already moved everything i need from the corrupted drive into another drives.
Question is now, can i fix the damaged drive? And how?

P.S so far my desktop running windows 7 was unable to boot in after i connected the HDD as secondary through sata cable - although i have my system on a completely separate SSD. So i'm basically writing this from my trusted Ubuntu.

Edit: Took screenshot of the corrupted disk.
https://ibb.co/jmkWhv

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

You can't fix a failed HDD - - just "vandalise" it sufficiently (eg drill some holes through it) so that it's data can't be accessed, then bin it.

 

[USAFRet]

Fridge magnet donor.

 

[gfliger51]

Hi,

Yesterday i opened my HP Probook 450 G1 laptop to do some work and was surprised with a BSOD and reboot loop. I thought it could be something with windows, so i inserted my windows 7 disk to attempt recovery/repair or even fresh install. But everytime i click on any option the screen freezes, mouse is movable but nothing happens for almost an hour.

So i booted Ubuntu from a usb drive i have for emergencies, and i was able to launch ubuntu and even access my HDD.
I'm still a noob at linux distros but i was able to open up "Disks" from the utilities and found out that the HDD self-test failed - whichever that means.
I already moved everything i need from the corrupted drive into another drives.
Question is now, can i fix the damaged drive? And how?

P.S so far my desktop running windows 7 was unable to boot in after i connected the HDD as secondary through sata cable - although i have my system on a completely separate SSD. So i'm basically writing this from my trusted Ubuntu.

Edit: Took screenshot of the corrupted disk.
https://ibb.co/jmkWhv

You can't fix a failed HDD - - just "vandalise" it sufficiently (eg drill some holes through it) so that it's data can't be accessed, then bin it.

Some people believe that once you've received an error such as yours the drive is toast. That may not be the case. My suggestion is to get a copy of Gibson Research's Spinrite program and run it on the drive. In many cases (I can attest to this personally) the area in question on the drive is not physically bad, just unable to be read reliably so is reported as an error to the S.M.A.R.T. programming imbedded in the drive. In many cases, a read error can be such that, for some reason, is not remapped to a reserved sector, which is transparent to you, but illeviates the error since the bad sector is not longer being accessed (locked away) by the drive's electronics. That's where Spinrite comes into play. It does a very thorough analysis of the drive's layout, inspects all sectors on the drive, and then will attempt to recover bad sectors and place them back into use, thus eleminating the error. It has five levels of analysis, level 5 being the most intense (and time consuming). Depending on the value of the drive and the data it contains it may well be worth the cost of the Spinrite program to get it and try to repair the drive. I've had excellent success over the years with its use, only finding two drives that were so far gone that I couldn't recover them.