The fudge! Less than 2 years into buying my HP Pavilion 11" laptop, its hard disk fails!
It happened yesterday:
It froze around 2 minutes in. I thought the HDMI cable to the monitor was loose. I shut off the laptop and put it on my lap to reach behind the monitor... The base of the laptop was HOT! I tried to boot it a few more times but it would freeze before it can load Windows.
F2 during start-up -> Quick System check. All passed except Hard Drive Short DST Check: Failed (screenshot's at the bottom of this post).
This HP laptop was pretty expensive for me, too. Sigh. Says I should call HP to know what the failure id/code in red means but, I don't have the energy for this anymore.
I need to work. I ordered a new laptop online last night, a different brand at a fraction of what I spent on this HP at the mall less than 2 years ago. I can't get over it - it's not even 2 years yet, I could've bought 2 more new laptops back then; a spare and a spare of the spare.
HP RECOVERY MEDIA USB (lifesaver)
I still have my HP recovery media usb so I can supposedly still get this laptop working again after I replace the hard disk. If and when. Sigh.
But thanks to the HP recovery media usb, I can boot using the media and copy the recent files that I wasn't able to back up. Things I learned while using this feature:
1. The separate USB to copy to should be formatted to NTFS (formatting to ntfs is simple enough to do from a working computer). Insert this NTFS usb in another port after successful boot from recovery media.
2. Backing up in one go (not compressed) did not go through with prompt that the media is "disconnected." My fix:
Manually select fewer files (< 500MB) and copy/backup in batches. It's okay because it creates individual folders each time.
When media shows "disconnected" again - cancel backup, unplug NTFS usb, restart (recovery media is always plugged in, of course) Repeat above until you get the files you need. Plus, it is way faster this way.
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