Trouble With My HDD!

[TempusFugit00]

While opening up my computer this morning it showed the error message "no bootable device insert disk and press any key" so I created a Win 10 recovery drive to troubleshoot. Many many many times the recovery drive would start loading windows then fade to black, frozen. Every so often it would allow me to enter WinRE. Startup Repair couldn't fix the issue so I used command prompt to run chkdks /f which couldn't work because the disk couldn't be locked. I also ran bootrec which didn't fix the issue. I know the hdd is sort of working because while in cmd I could access and view the directories on the drive. I then pulled the HDD out and tried to access it with another machine, but this drive just gave my other computer problems while booting, even if I specifically selected the other boot drive. Next I ran AVG Rescue CD which turned up nothing. After that I created a win 10 installation usb drive which starts to load then freezes like the recovery drive. The laptop is an old Acer Aspire V5 ZRI with a 1TB Western Digital HDD. I've exhausted most of the avenues I know to remedy this problem. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[The_Prophecy]

From that description the drive is on its way out. I would suggest connecting the drive either to another machine after booting up, or to it's own machine and using the WinRE environment to start recovering any data you need from it. You're probably looking at an RMA here. Outright replacement if the drive is no longer under warranty.

 

[TempusFugit00]

From that description the drive is on its way out. I would suggest connecting the drive either to another machine after booting up, or to it's own machine and using the WinRE environment to start recovering any data you need from it. You're probably looking at an RMA here. Outright replacement if the drive is no longer under warranty.

First off, thank you for such a quick response!

hmm I was hoping this wasn't the case. It's strange that I can access the drive from WinRE cmd.exe and see all the files and directories. Would you know what woluld cause the WinRE Recovery drive to not popup or be ridiculously slow just with this HDD? Any chance this is Malware or a Rootkit? Also probably not a good idea to try a clean install on this drive then eh?
Thanks again!

 

[The_Prophecy]

A regular malware infection being the cause is unlikely. The drive would speed up again when accessed offline or in another system if the malware in question was hogging system resources (in this case triggering large amounts of I/O for that drive), as the malware would have no way to automatically execute itself if the drive was connected (slaved) to another system.

As far as a rootkit is concerned, I'd say also unlikely. Rootkits differ from regular malware in that they are designed to give someone admin (or root) access to a machine once it infects a given computer. Rootkits can also obfuscate themselves from the host operating system on the drive which they infect making them much more difficult to remove. It's rare that they come with any functionality designed to help themselves run from an offline volume.

Finally, no, definitely do not try to install Windows on this drive again, especially if you have data you need to recover. In the event you don't need to back anything up, just contact the OEM for support. Trying another Windows install hoping it will help the issue likely will result in nothing more than wasting an hour or more that you could have spent setting up an RMA.