Sudden Hard Drive Problem

[Dani]

I have an HP Pavillion dv6700 that's less than a year old. I was on it last night until 1:30 am and it was working fine. I turned it on this afternoon and suddenly nothing will load. It will start up and say "Windows Loading" but then all I have is a black screen and my mouse. Function keys do nothing, start key does nothing, ctrl+alt+delete does nothing. Long story short my hard drive is...I don't know what it is. Bakshir, from HP support, said that the error code (19008 Repair Hard Disk) means that I need a new hard drive, but we can't actually figure out what the issue with it is.

I gotta tell you after an hour on the phone with HP I'm extremely frustrated and downright pissed off. Beyond that, I'm worried about losing all the information on my hard drive. I really don't want to lose all my pictures and documents. Does anyone have ANY clue how I can backup my information before I receive the new hard drive? Before I called HP I pressed a button during start up (F9 or F10 or something, I don't remember) and found something that gave me the option of backing up my files but I need a USB drive to do that. I'd rather put everything on a CD, but at this point I'm not going to be picky. Anyone have a better suggestion?

 

[Tagrineth]

This is why you should generally keep your data backed up on a semi-regular basis somehow or another. :x

I think in a year and a half of call center duty, about maybe 5-10 people that I EVER spoke to had their data backed up. Full time work, mind you.

The only two ways to recover your data at this point are a. using a USB mass-storage device like a flash drive or portable hard drive via HP's system recovery manager (F11 on startup, don't choose to do a system recovery though, it'll erase everything and won't solve your problem since it IS the hard drive failing), or b. connecting that hard drive to another computer (easier said than done, it's probably a portable SATA drive which means you'd need a cable specifically for it).

 

[Darkdante]

If your like me and your time and efforts and more important than a mere hundred dollars, then buy a new harddisk, load up windows, put the old drive as a slave, and see what you can save that way.

Keep in mind it is highly likely that you won't be able to save anything.

Or you could ask a friend if they have a spare harddisk you could borrow for a few days to try that.

Or better yet you could put the drive in a friends computer that works and put it as a slave and do the same.

Thats probably the fastest most fool proof way of making sure your harddisk works and getting stuff off.

 

[Dani]

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm going to try to back my files up via F11 today.

I started the laptop up today and surprisingly it got all the way to the welcome screen, which it did not do the other day. I sat in anticipation as the green circle continued to think but it never did anything. I had hopes it would start up one last time so I could get my stuff without hassle but no such miracle. As soon as I hit a button it locked up.