Hard disk failure. Please help!

[moon]

So, a power surge killed the HD on my desktop. I called a tech guy who charges $270 to fix it. That is too much for me right now, so I was wondering if I could fix this myself, but I'm not tech savvy at all and I don't feel comfortable with opening the case.

I wonder if it is possible to just get an external HD loaded with Windows to fix the problem?

I don't care about data recovering now, I just want to have the computer up an running ASAP.

Also, is there a way to get my copy of Windows 10 back without a key?

BTW, if anyone knows how to truly protect your electronics from power surges, please let me know. I thought I was protected...

 

[Geoff_M]

If you previously set up Microsoft account on the PC in question, then you can do a "bare metal" reinstall of Windows 10 and when you then log into your Microsoft account after you load Win10 your license key information will be retrieved from Microsoft. You will need to get a copy of Win10 install media (search "Windows 10 1803 ISO") and create a bootable DVD or USB drive from another working PC. You may need to change the BIOS setup on your PC to make sure that you can boot from a DVD or USB drive. If your drive is "fried", you may need to replace it before the process will work.

Here's a YouTube video that describes the process:

 

[GreatLakes]

A power surge usually breaks a system board or power supply, not necessarily the hard drive. If you don't care about the data because it is backed up you could just do a fresh installation of Windows on a new drive and go from there.

If you are sure it is the drive and it just has some damaged sectors you can run SpinRite on it. It is $89 and is something I recommend everyone runs on every disk drive they own a few times a year anyway.

 

[moon]

Thank you, Geoff. If I have a microsoft account the information would be stored on the HD that died, so, I don't have access to it. The only other computer I have access to is the Chromebook I'm using now.

Thank you for your reply.

 

[Floridaman999]

A power surge would be much more likely to have damaged the mother board first. Your hard drive might actually be fine but the motherboard may be damaged enough that the drive will not perform properly. Unless you have a bit of skill and experience with PC's and their parts, you may need to use someone who does to get this one properly diagnosed and repaired. There are too many variables that could be at play with a power surge issue.

 

[moon]

A power surge usually breaks a system board or power supply, not necessarily the hard drive. If you don't care about the data because it is backed up you could just do a fresh installation of Windows on a new drive and go from there.

If you are sure it is the drive and it just has some damaged sectors you can run SpinRite on it. It is $89 and is something I recommend everyone runs on every disk drive they own a few times a year anyway.

Thanks Great Lakes. The message I get when I turn on the computer is "Hard-disk drive failure. Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility

 

[DLgal]

You say you are not tech saavy at all. Pay the repair guy the $270 to fix it, or, alternatively, just buy a new computer. I had a motherboard failure 2 years ago and rather than spending $300 to replace it, I just bought a brand new, $400 Lenovo desktop that was on sale at Best Buy. It's performed flawlessly for 2 years. The IT guy who diagnosed my broken computer told me to never buy that brand again (HP) and to only buy these three brands: Lenovo, Acer, or Asus.

The only reason to repair a hard disk is to recover data. Since you don't care about that, your options are replacing the damaged HDD with a new one or buying a new computer. The power surge may have damaged more than just the hard drive, so I would recommend just buying a new computer at this point, since other problems will likely crop up soon.

You cannot run a desktop computer off an external HDD very well. You need to be pretty tech saavy to set it up properly (making sure your drive is configured to run BIOS off the USB) and even then, it will run SOOOOO SLOOOOOOWLY. It will drive you mad.

 

[GreatLakes]

Thank you, Geoff. If I have a microsoft account the information would be stored on the HD that died, so, I don't have access to it. The only other computer I have access to is the Chromebook I'm using now.

Thank you for your reply.

I believe Geoff is referring to an account at Microsoft, not a Windows login. If the account is with Microsoft they still have it, you would just need to login. If the credentials were on the damaged hard drive they have a password reset option.

Thanks Great Lakes. The message I get when I turn on the computer is "Hard-disk drive failure. Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility

It could still be the hard disk controller, not the drive. On a consumer computer the BIOS reporting isn't often granular enough to know for sure what has failed. I had a $250,000 IBM AIX server that couldn't properly report on a cascading failure so even in the enterprise it isn't guaranteed that the hardware error you get is really the problem.

It is likely the laptop either came with recovery disks or, more likely if bought in the past decade, a hidden recovery partition. You can google your laptop brand and "boot recovery partition you'll get how to boot into that partition and restore. All data will be gone but if you don't care about the data or it is backed up that doesn't matter.

The IT guy who diagnosed my broken computer told me to never buy that brand again (HP) and to only buy these three brands: Lenovo, Acer, or Asus.

See, I only buy Dell, HP (though I opt for HPE and not consumer), and on occasion higher end Toshibas. Lenovo was great while they were IBM but they are only ok now. I would never buy an Acer or Asus but each their own.

 

[bcla]

A power surge would be much more likely to have damaged the mother board first. Your hard drive might actually be fine but the motherboard may be damaged enough that the drive will not perform properly. Unless you have a bit of skill and experience with PC's and their parts, you may need to use someone who does to get this one properly diagnosed and repaired. There are too many variables that could be at play with a power surge issue.

There could be a lot of different things that could have happened with a power surge, including a physical head crash where the platters were scraped. There is nothing that can be done to recover that data, and the heads themselves could be damaged. I've had a forced shutdown corrupt a hard drive. It's theoretically recoverable, but only with heavy duty recovery tools. If the board was damaged, then maybe a donor board from an absolutely identical donor drive might work. However, if you look at hard drives, they tend to have all these minor part number differences that have to do with firmware and slight operational differences. Finding the exact part is very difficult, unless someone specifically bought an identical drive at the same time just in case. I'd think having a backup would make more sense.

If it was something like a hybrid flash/hard drive (like Seagate's FireCuda) then a donor board wouldn't work at all.

 

[DLgal]

See, I only buy Dell, HP (though I opt for HPE and not consumer), and on occasion higher end Toshibas. Lenovo was great while they were IBM but they are only ok now. I would never buy an Acer or Asus but each their own.

The IT guy has been running a computer repair business for 15 years and he based this recommendation on the best brands for the VERY BASIC HOME USER, which is what we are. He said, and I quote: "Never spend more than $500 and buy one of those three brands." He said in his experience, the most failures come from Dell and HP by a long shot. Probably once you get into the much higher end models of these brands, you end up with better machines, but for basic home use (light internet, Office use, etc), these three brands lower end machines are the best bang for the buck, and when they fail after a few years, it's not a huge blow to the wallet. The HP I had that failed, literally failed ONE MONTH beyond the 1 year warranty. It was a $900 desktop. Money down the drain with that piece of garbage. It was a slimline tower, with a motherboard that had an embedded graphics card, which was the part that failed, so very difficult to replace in the small form factor case. The guy told me it wasn't worth my money to replace the motherboard, because all the internal components were SUPER low quality to begin with and I shouldn't sink any more money into such a P.O.C. (his words...he could have made a few hundred bucks "fixing" it for me, but he told me if it was his computer, he wouldn't spend a penny more on it). He was willing to lose money to give me good advice, and he wasn't wrong. Like I said, this $400 Lenovo has been, probably, the best desktop we've ever had up to this point.

 

[nd5056]

Thanks Great Lakes. The message I get when I turn on the computer is "Hard-disk drive failure. Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility

The Motherboard, it just doesn't "see" the hard drive. If there's a spike going thru, sometimes it toasts the power supply, but sometimes the arch will jump over and fry the motherboard. I did happen to me a while back.

EDIT:

... and when they fail after a few years...

The technology is advancing so rapidly, in couple of year your PC or Laptop is pretty much obsolete ,technology wise. You're better off buying a budget one and replace it if it brakes down rather then throwing the money for repairs.

There is a "Life" factor designed into the stuff lately, they won't last much longer past their manufacturing warranty. No one makes money anymore on selling spare parts and servicing things, so they design a disposable items. They brake, it's cheaper to buy newer and better item then to repair the old one.

 

[moon]

After reading your replies I think I'll be better off buying a new PC. Thanks everyone!

 

[Imzadi]

rather than spending $300 to replace it, I just bought a brand new, $400 Lenovo desktop that was on sale at Best Buy. It's performed flawlessly for 2 years. The IT guy who diagnosed my broken computer told me to never buy that brand again (HP) and to only buy these three brands: Lenovo, Acer, or Asus.

The technology is advancing so rapidly, in couple of year your PC or Laptop is pretty much obsolete ,technology wise. You're better off buying a budget one and replace it if it brakes down rather then throwing the money for repairs.

I was also about to recommend buying a new PC rather than using that money to fix the current one. There are some stores that will let the OP pay off the purchase in installments. I think Best Buy & Walmart have that option for some items. QVC & HSN definitely has that option for all their items.

For some stupid reason, I kept buying HP (basic consumer) laptops. I've had 3 of them. The first was because I didn't know enough about PCs. The second was because I thought maybe it was a fluke I had bought such a cheaply made laptop the first time. So I spent $600 to buy what I thought was a "better" model. This last one, I decided not to spend more than $350 as, like a PP said, technology would render it obsolete before the laptop broke. I prefer a 17.3" screen, which automatically runs $700-$1000 for better brands. Yet EACH HP broke is some way or another - and it was usually because of cheap components. And this last one broke before the technology is even obsolete. Yeah, I got what I paid for.

I have a Lenovo tablet that I love. I bought it refurbished from the manufacturer, and whatever repair they had to do in which it was sent to them, it works fantastic now. So they were on top of repairs before selling it again. I know other people who have Acer, or Asus equipment & recommend them. So never again will I get an HP computer. I had been thinking of going with one of the 3 you recommended.

 

[DisneyHardin]

I'm right there with you OP. We just paid $289 this week to have a new hard drive put in our 18 month old laptop. I probably should have just bought a new one, but this was a $500 laptop, and so it was still $200 cheaper than getting a new one. Hopefully this hard drive will last longer than the original.

 

[nd5056]

I'm right there with you OP. We just paid $289 this week to have a new hard drive put in our 18 month old laptop. I probably should have just bought a new one, but this was a $500 laptop, and so it was still $200 cheaper than getting a new one. Hopefully this hard drive will last longer than the original.

Out of curiosity, does your laptop have better specs then THIS ONE HERE: for $349?

 

[Geoff_M]

I believe Geoff is referring to an account at Microsoft, not a Windows login. If the account is with Microsoft they still have it, you would just need to login. If the credentials were on the damaged hard drive they have a password reset option.

That is correct. A few month ago my son bought a new laptop and wanted to re-use his old one in the shop at work and asked me to re-install Win10 on it to wipe out his personal settings. I tried to do so using the recovery partition on the laptop, but it turned out that partition was corrupt and the re-build died half way through the process. This left the HD unbootable. I was able to create a bootable Win10 install DVD (similar to the video shown shown above) and installed the OS to the laptop using it. As part of the final bits of the install process, it asks for your Microsoft account name and password. It uses this information to retrieve your Win10 license key information from Microsoft. It worked like a charm and I was never prompted to enter any product keys at any time.

One of the reasons I mention this is that I know that when you get a Win10 PC, I believe the process of creating and using a Microsoft account is optional. However, you may have noticed that they no longer include OS install media and product keys or have MS license key stickers on the bottoms of PCs anymore. The only way to keep your OS (and other MS product?) licenses safe is to us a MS account.

 

[Geoff_M]

Out of curiosity, does your laptop have better specs then THIS ONE HERE: for $349?

Only one problem that I see with this one. Today I would only recommend people buy PCs or laptops with solid state drives (SSD) instead of traditional hard drives (HD). You can be assured that budget laptops with HDs will use cheaper ultra-slow 5400 RPM drives. The speed differences between SSDs and HDs is ridiculous. I swapped my 1 TB 5400 HD for a 1 TB SSD and now is only takes seconds to boot up instead of a couple of minutes. On top of that, your battery life will get a very nice boost as it doesn't have to power a spinning hard drive all of the time.

It's $120 more, but we bought one of these as a Christmas present for someone and it will deliver a whole lot more bang for your buck. $469

 

[nd5056]

Absolutely. But, trying to compare apples to apples, I don't think 18 months old laptop purchased for $500 had a SSD Drive for this money back then. Also, just because there's a brand new HD in there, it doesn't guarantee that it'll last another 18 months.

 

[Floridaman999]

I've never created or used an MS account in my life and have reinstalled Windows 10 about a dozen times on about 5 different PC's here at home and for family. The key is now associated with the motherboard on the PC and just checking "I don't have a key" at reinstall let me go through the process where Windows communicated with Microsoft and confirmed it had been activated in the past. The instructions during install even tell you to do this if you've had Windows 10 on this PC before. I've used offline accounts for all my PC's always and have never had an issue reinstalling Windows 10.

 

[Geoff_M]

Absolutely. But, trying to compare apples to apples, I don't think 18 months old laptop purchased for $500 had a SSD Drive for this money back then. Also, just because there's a brand new HD in there, it doesn't guarantee that it'll last another 18 months.

I get it, it may not be prudent to dump ~$300 into an inoperable laptop to try and stretch it out for who knows how long. I assumed that you pointed to the Lenovo model as a possible alternative for moon to consider. My point was that while the Lenovo may be more of an "apple to apple" comparison in terms of the component that's at the center of the problem, today I would not recommend someone purchase a new laptop with a HD instead of a SSD. The prices of SSDs continue to fall such that now you can find 2.5" 500 GB Samsung SSDs for under $75.