HDD SMART Failure BIOHD-8

karlm14

Newbie
Hi people advice please. I have a HP Pavillion Slimline that I've tried to fix for a friend. When computer starts up it goes past the operating system loading screen (Where it DOESNT have the Vista logo as it normally would) and then just hangs on a blue screen as if its trying too boot, I presume the HDD failure has corrupt some OS start up files. She's quite keen to keep the data on the HDD (holiday photo's etc). When I run the built in HP Diagnostics tool it shows that it has failed a SMART test with error code 'BIOHD-8'. If I remember correctly it is a Seagate HDD but I would have too open it too check again. It also won't boot from a CD which I find strange. Would it be simple enough to buy a new HDD with a Vista boot CD, and using the license key on the tower, re-installing the OS and then see If I can recover data of corrupt drive by using it as a slave? I could probably have a good go at this, I have a little background in this but limited knowledge. Thanks for any help, please ask if you need any more information.
 
If it won't boot from CD it is possible that this feature is not set in the BIOS, have you checked?

A new drive and a clean install of the same OS that was originally installed using their genuine key will be ok.

I would remove the dodgy drive and fit it to an external caddy without delay and see if you can read it on another machine with a view to recovering photos Etc.
 
I did check the BIOS and it all seemed ok mate, thanks for that advice - I think I have an external HDD case kicking around somewhere I never thought of that! I'll look into getting a new hard drive for them.
 
You are going to have to sort that boot from CD issue unless the machine supports boot from USB..... in order to be able to do a clean install on the new drive.
 
Check BIOS to see if there is an option to turn on\off boot menu display. There should be a screen splash at startup displaying an "F" key to display boot options.
 
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