Can't reinstall Windows and need to rescue data from my hard drive

Hey everyone.

So, my laptop's internal Hard Drive (a Dell Latitude) is split into two partitions. I've got the C: drive, which is about 40 GB and holds the OS, and then the D: drive, roughly 280 GB, where all my actual files live.

For years, I stuck with Windows 7, stubbornly refusing to make the jump to Windows 10.

Then, sometime after New Year's Day back in January, I was forced to format the C: partition to get some specific programs working, so I did a clean install of Windows 10. On the other hand, I didn't touch the D: partition at all—it's vital to me since it’s packed with private family stuff and work documents.

That's when things started going south. Windows 10 was "slow as molasses"
and it seems like that 40 GB wasn't nearly enough... After the install, I was left with maybe 2 GB of free space. It was painfully slow, but I just dealt with it.

But about ten days ago, it started acting up. It wouldn't boot on the first try, and the Hard Drive itself started making this weird noise—never happened before. For the last ten days or so, I've had to restart the laptop three or four times just to get Windows to boot. Most of the time, it just throws an error saying "There is no O.S.," as if the operating system vanished. And even when Windows 10 finally decides to load after several tries, it's incredibly sluggish and keeps freezing. Plus, there's that strange sound coming from the Hard Drive... As of yesterday, getting Windows 10 to boot is basically impossible.

Last night, I grabbed a Windows 10 installation disc and a Windows 7 installation USB stick. First, I formatted the C: partition again, but neither one would install. Neither Windows 7 nor Windows 10. Just kept throwing error 0x80070005.

From what I can tell, it looks like the Hard Drive is dying. I won't say it's completely dead, but it's definitely "on its last legs." It's about 10 or 12 years old, after all.

Let's say I go out and buy a new Hard Drive, pop it into the laptop, and everything works fine.

What I need to know is: how am I going to rescue the important data on the D: partition from this current Hard Drive? How can I temporarily connect this existing Hard Drive to the laptop to copy those files over? They're really important to me.

Don't even bother turning that laptop on. Just pull the Hard Drive out, plug it into a desktop, and try to rescue whatever files aren't corrupted. It looks like that drive is riddled with bad sectors, and honestly, every time you power it up, those bad spots just spread further.
The good news is this machine supports SSDs. You could even swap out the old CD/DVD drive for a second storage bay if you wanted to toss in a new HDD alongside the SSD.
Once you switch to an SSD, the laptop is going to feel snappy again. That sluggishness you're seeing with Windows 10? Most likely just the old Hard Drive struggling to keep up.
The max RAM capacity is 8GB, so if you're sitting at 4GB right now, adding another 4GB would be a smart move.
Also, keep in mind that overheating can really tank your performance too. It might be worth taking it to a repair shop to have them swap the drives and give the fans and heatsink a good cleaning while they're at it...

wiredtiger2 said:Hey everyone.

So, my laptop's internal Hard Drive (a Dell Latitude) is split into two partitions. I've got the C: drive, which is about 40 GB and holds the OS, and then the D: drive, roughly 280 GB, where all my actual files live.

For years, I stuck with Windows 7, stubbornly refusing to make the jump to Windows 10.

Then, sometime after New Year's Day back in January, I was forced to format the C: partition to get some specific programs working, so I did a clean install of Windows 10. On the other hand, I didn't touch the D: partition at all—it's vital to me since it’s packed with private family stuff and work documents.

That's when things started going south. Windows 10 was "slow as molasses"
and it seems like that 40 GB wasn't nearly enough... After the install, I was left with maybe 2 GB of free space. It was painfully slow, but I just dealt with it.

But about ten days ago, it started acting up. It wouldn't boot on the first try, and the Hard Drive itself started making this weird noise—never happened before. For the last ten days or so, I've had to restart the laptop three or four times just to get Windows to boot. Most of the time, it just throws an error saying "There is no O.S.," as if the operating system vanished. And even when Windows 10 finally decides to load after several tries, it's incredibly sluggish and keeps freezing. Plus, there's that strange sound coming from the Hard Drive... As of yesterday, getting Windows 10 to boot is basically impossible.

Last night, I grabbed a Windows 10 installation disc and a Windows 7 installation USB stick. First, I formatted the C: partition again, but neither one would install. Neither Windows 7 nor Windows 10. Just kept throwing error 0x80070005.

From what I can tell, it looks like the Hard Drive is dying. I won't say it's completely dead, but it's definitely "on its last legs." It's about 10 or 12 years old, after all.

Let's say I go out and buy a new Hard Drive, pop it into the laptop, and everything works fine.

What I need to know is: how am I going to rescue the important data on the D: partition from this current Hard Drive? How can I temporarily connect this existing Hard Drive to the laptop to copy those files over? They're really important to me.

Just grab a USB enclosure for that old Hard Drive, slide it inside, and you'll be good to go once you've finished setting up the laptop with the new Hard Drive.

It is highly probable that the read/write head on that old Hard Drive is damaged, so you might actually have to give it a little physical tap to get it spinning when you boot it up, but you should be able to make it work.

So, we're at the end of July. You’re telling me these issues started around New Year's Day when you installed your new Windows. And yet, in the seven months since then, you haven't thought to move your data to an external Hard Drive, a thumb drive, or even just some cloud storage?

Then, about ten days ago—if I'm following your timeline correctly—the drive starts making it crystal clear that it's dying. And even then, you still didn't think to back anything up.

Look, my suggestion? Just keep messing around with it until it finally kicks the bucket. Then, once it's officially dead, take that paperweight to a data recovery specialist and let them try to pull your files out. Of course, they’ll charge you an arm and a leg for the privilege.

Alright, jokes aside. You've already been given plenty of advice here on what to do. If I were to add one thing, it'd be this: you could just grab a cheap USB enclosure for the drive. Once you pull the drive out, pop it into the enclosure and see if you can still read it. If you're lucky, it might still work.

That way, you might actually save something before it's too late. Professionals can usually extract data from a dead drive, but they'll charge you enough to buy gold based on how much that drive weighs. Sometimes even more than that.

darkcyclist92 said:Just grab a USB enclosure for that old Hard Drive, slide it inside, and you'll be good to go once you've finished setting up the laptop with the new Hard Drive.

It is highly probable that the read/write head on that old Hard Drive is damaged, so you might actually have to give it a little physical tap to get it spinning when you boot it up, but you should be able to make it work.

Disks don't have needles. There's a different term for that, but whatever.

...seriously, stop tapping on that Seagate. You're just asking for more bad sectors to pop up.

Look, there are definitely ways to grab the files you actually care about. First things first: you've gotta pull that drive out of the machine. Once it's out, grab a USB adapter for a 2.5" drive—either borrow one or just pick one up online—and plug it into any working computer. That way, you can just drag and drop whatever you need.
Like I said before, the best move is to take that pulled drive and plug it directly into a desktop PC—maybe a buddy's rig, your son's computer, or even a workstation at the office. From there, you can dump everything onto their internal drive if they've got the space, or just move it over to some thumb drives.
Later on, once you've got your laptop sorted out with a Samsung SSD and a fresh OS install, you can just move all those saved files right back onto your machine.

This is quite a handy little device to have on hand

https://www.amazon.com/external-hard-drive-enclosure/b?node=172241511

It clones drives without needing a computer involved, and honestly, it performs significantly better than those cheap docking stations ... I've relied on mine for years now.
An essential piece of kit for any serious setup.

As has already been noted—tapping on the unit is certainly not advised. It is notoriously difficult to ensure the head is actually in its "parked position," and that "head" (which isn't really one) is merely held above the platter by an air cushion.
Though, if you want to actually hear a rattle, you’d have to hit it pretty hard 😁

The three of you... if this is how you handle technical troubleshooting, you're absolutely incompetent.

One of you is just narcissistically parroting my own response while blindly accepting bad sectors like a drunkard; the second is hiding behind useless jargon to lecture a kid who clearly doesn't realize his Seagate is failing; and the third would actually suggest cloning a drive that is practically dead—I'm talking physically scratched by the actuator arm.

Bravo. Truly top-tier work...

darkcyclist92 said:The three of you... if this is how you handle technical troubleshooting, you're absolutely incompetent.

One of you is just narcissistically parroting my own response while blindly accepting bad sectors like a drunkard; the second is hiding behind useless jargon to lecture a kid who clearly doesn't realize his Seagate is failing; and the third would actually suggest cloning a drive that is practically dead—I'm talking physically scratched by the actuator arm.

Bravo. Truly top-tier work...

Alright, let’s try this again. Hard drives don't have needles. Record players have needles. Drives have heads.

https://hhr.wiki/detial/Disk_read-and-write_head

Yeah, I had to jump back in there because it looked like the guy needed some extra hand-holding after post #3. He seemed a bit lost on whether he should be "tinkering" or just "smashing things together," so I figured I'd clarify: seriously, just grab a Samsung SSD instead of an old-school Seagate if you're running Windows 10. It's a night and day difference.

darkcyclist92 said:The three of you... if this is how you handle technical troubleshooting, you're absolutely incompetent.

One of you is just narcissistically parroting my own response while blindly accepting bad sectors like a drunkard; the second is hiding behind useless jargon to lecture a kid who clearly doesn't realize his Seagate is failing; and the third would actually suggest cloning a drive that is practically dead—I'm talking physically scratched by the actuator arm.

Bravo. Truly top-tier work...

🤣 Perhaps someone should actually read what you're typing... maybe then you'd grasp the reality of the situation. But unlikely.

"A dead drive isn't necessarily useless, but when you clone it onto a new one, you aren't solving the core issue. You haven't fixed the underlying mechanical failures; you've just moved them, leaving you vulnerable to the inevitable errors that follow."
Do you follow, rookie?
Pure arrogance.

Jerry Robinson56 said:🤣 Perhaps someone should actually read what you're typing... maybe then you'd grasp the reality of the situation. But unlikely.

"A dead drive isn't necessarily useless, but when you clone it onto a new one, you aren't solving the core issue. You haven't fixed the underlying mechanical failures; you've just moved them, leaving you vulnerable to the inevitable errors that follow."
Do you follow, rookie?
Pure arrogance.

I actually managed to successfully clone a drive riddled with bad sectors using Macrium Reflect. None of the other Hard Drive cloning tools I tried could pull it off.

shadowlynx102 said:I actually managed to successfully clone a drive riddled with bad sectors using Macrium Reflect. None of the other Hard Drive cloning tools I tried could pull it off.

🙂 It is reassuring to see others finding success with these "deviant" methods... just another "bad guy" in the books. 🤔

Speaking of brute force—don't overdo it, maybe grab a larger hammer instead (😁)—this particular device has proven itself an excellent solution for me. The primary advantage is that you don't even need a computer to perform the cloning. Furthermore, it provides sufficient cooling for the drives, which is vital if you're facing a long haul while attempting to recover data that has been deleted or formatted.

Even setting that aside, it is a piece of equipment that everyone should own; it’s incredibly inexpensive, and the ability to plug drives directly into a running PC as easily as a USB stick is quite convenient.

I appreciate the information...

Look, I’ve spent my life playing digital paramedic for thousands of drives—everything from old-school MFM/RLL/ESDI setups and SSDs to those ancient 5.25" and 3.5" floppies, ZIP drives, MO disks, CDs, and DVDs. Some of them were straight-up zombies: motors wouldn't spin, the electronics were fried, or even if you managed to get a utility to talk to the drive, it just screamed about endless errors. Honestly, you start hearing a whole story once you open one up.

The thing is, based on what you're saying, we honestly can't tell where the actual breakdown is happening.

(1) You might have physical damage on the magnetic media itself. A typical Seagate might have anywhere from 1 to 5 platters, both sides used. Usually, they're all functional, but some drives use specific sides strictly for servo data or keeping track of bad sectors.

(2) It could be a busted read head (or heads). Your average drive usually has two heads per platter, though some beefier ones pack more in to crank up those read speeds.

(3) Or the electronics are shot—could be the controller, the motor driver, or just the communication line back to the motherboard.

Usually, issues (1), (2), and (3) show up as these "phantom errors." They pop up sporadically, acting like things are fine one second and then failing the next, and they almost always get worse over time.

(4) Then there’s data corruption in the cache—think battery-backed cache or flash cache. This usually happens after a sudden power loss, a dead battery, or a glitchy flash module. That cache (and the electronic failure behind it) could be sitting on the drive's own controller or on the computer's disk controller.

(5) Or it's software-side file system corruption. Think an OS crash where files don't close properly and get stuck mid-transaction, or maybe the drive head just dumps random junk onto the platters during a hard shutdown. The absolute nightmare scenario is when the FAT (DOS) or the MFT (NTFS) gets trashed and you haven't got a backup ready (unless you're on NTFS 5.0+).

Bottom line? To actually fix this without wasting time, you’ve gotta pinpoint exactly what’s broken first. It could even be a combo of several things.

There’s no magic bullet tool for this.

wiredcanyon94 said:Alright, let’s try this again. Hard drives don't have needles. Record players have needles. Drives have heads.

https://hhr.wiki/detial/Disk_read-and-write_head

Are you kidding me right now? 😲 Seriously? If you want my opinion, it seems to me that the only thing on this entire thread actually possessing a head is the disk itself.🤣

If you are going to offer advice to anyone, then focus on the actual problem, man—that is the whole point. These pedantic linguistic debates are completely useless.

Jack Cook7 said:Look, I’ve spent my life playing digital paramedic for thousands of drives—everything from old-school MFM/RLL/ESDI setups and SSDs to those ancient 5.25" and 3.5" floppies, ZIP drives, MO disks, CDs, and DVDs. Some of them were straight-up zombies: motors wouldn't spin, the electronics were fried, or even if you managed to get a utility to talk to the drive, it just screamed about endless errors. Honestly, you start hearing a whole story once you open one up.

The thing is, based on what you're saying, we honestly can't tell where the actual breakdown is happening.

(1) You might have physical damage on the magnetic media itself. A typical Seagate might have anywhere from 1 to 5 platters, both sides used. Usually, they're all functional, but some drives use specific sides strictly for servo data or keeping track of bad sectors.

(2) It could be a busted read head (or heads). Your average drive usually has two heads per platter, though some beefier ones pack more in to crank up those read speeds.

(3) Or the electronics are shot—could be the controller, the motor driver, or just the communication line back to the motherboard.

Usually, issues (1), (2), and (3) show up as these "phantom errors." They pop up sporadically, acting like things are fine one second and then failing the next, and they almost always get worse over time.

(4) Then there’s data corruption in the cache—think battery-backed cache or flash cache. This usually happens after a sudden power loss, a dead battery, or a glitchy flash module. That cache (and the electronic failure behind it) could be sitting on the drive's own controller or on the computer's disk controller.

(5) Or it's software-side file system corruption. Think an OS crash where files don't close properly and get stuck mid-transaction, or maybe the drive head just dumps random junk onto the platters during a hard shutdown. The absolute nightmare scenario is when the FAT (DOS) or the MFT (NTFS) gets trashed and you haven't got a backup ready (unless you're on NTFS 5.0+).

Bottom line? To actually fix this without wasting time, you’ve gotta pinpoint exactly what’s broken first. It could even be a combo of several things.

There’s no magic bullet tool for this.

This conversation is utterly pointless.

A needle fell onto the disk and created a scratch. Every single time the needle hits that scratch, Windows boots up—otherwise, the needle returns, logically bouncing back 3 or 4 times before finally failing to read the loadup, resulting in a read error. If it were the magnetic head failing or a dead sector, Windows would never boot at all from the initial problem. But judging by the author's experience, it actually does work sometimes.

Hypothetically, the solution is to put the disk into a USB enclosure (ideally one with dual power supplies), and during the Seagate loadup, gently tap or sharply nudge the USB enclosure from the left or right side while it sits on the desk so that the needle skips over that scratch during the loading process. If it doesn't work the first time, keep repeating the motion until it succeeds. If it works, that will likely be the absolute last chance to get the disk to spin up and save any data.

I am referring to the author mentioning hearing noise from inside the disk; while it's true the sound could be coming from the power supply, if that were the case, a read error wouldn't occur.

I personally saved data from a Seagate this way using an identical set of symptoms. And yes, it can be done—not necessarily all the data, but maybe 95% of it. I eventually physically opened that drive, and there was a scratch running across the entire platter. A scratch exactly like the kind a needle would make.

Using an enclosure will also bypass any potential COM issues, but if there is anything critical on that disk, professional help is recommended. Furthermore, regarding the enclosure, the half-amp provided by standard USB ports is often insufficient for certain 2.5" drives to spin up, so you really need to pay attention to the label on the Seagate itself. Though, from the start, it is best to look for an enclosure with dual power supplies for tasks like this.

It’s not quite that simple, man.

Look, I won't get too bogged down in the weeds here, but one or more heads can go south and start reading things "wonky." Maybe the media itself is getting worn out—honestly, Windows 10 can be pretty demanding on hardware, so maybe the drive just got beat up in certain spots. Or the servo mechanism is failing... there's a whole laundry list of stuff that causes this kind of mess.

That sound you're hearing?

a) Is it the infamous "click of death"? (If the drive sounds like "click, click, click...", well, I don't even need to tell you what that means). If that's the case, you've got about five minutes on the clock before your data is gone forever. Your best bet is taking it to a pro, but expect a bill anywhere from $1,000 to $1667 plus the cost of a new drive. In the absolute worst-case scenario, they have to pull the platters and swap them into an identical drive, which is a massive headache.

b) If it's more of a rattling noise, you probably had a head or a stepper motor snap. That means the data on that specific side of the disk is basically unreachable. Again, we're talking platter swaps.

c) If it’s "just" a loud buzzing, it means the servo mechanism and the heads are still working, but they're struggling to grab certain bits of data (for a million different reasons) and are repeatedly trying over and over. There might actually be some hope for saving things here.

d) It’s also possible the main motor is dying; usually, you'll hear that heavy buzzing speed up and slow down.

Here’s the golden rule when you're dealing with drive drama like this:

1. Have you run chkdsk C: yet? (You know what that is, right?)

2. Some PCs have a built-in option in the BIOS Setup to check the drive without messing with the actual content. You can run that just to see how many hardware errors you're looking at. You should probably test the SAS/SATA controller and the RAM too, because bad RAM can cause these exact same headaches. The perk here is that it doesn't need the file system; it bypasses it and talks directly to the drive.

3. DO NOT TOUCH THAT DRIVE ANYMORE. Seriously, stop booting from it. Unplug it as your primary drive and set it as a secondary one. If you aren't sure how to do that, grab a USB/SATA adapter—ideally one with its own power supply or a dual USB setup—pop the drive in there, and plug it in as a USB drive (secondary). If you can't figure that out, don't waste any more time; just take it straight to the data recovery pros.

4. Grab a different drive, hook it up as your primary, install Windows 10, and boot from that as your C: drive.

5. In the Disk Manager on your new Windows 10 setup, you should see the secondary drive (your old, busted one) and both of its partitions, though they'll likely have different letters now. If the new drive is C:, then the old C: will become D:, and the old D: will become E:

6. Copy your files over to the new drive. Honestly, Internet Explorer is terrible at these kinds of transfers because it just crashes when it hits a corrupted file. It doesn't have a "retry" option and it won't leave you a log telling you which files failed or how many errors they had so you could try again later. Find yourself a free utility. Windows has robocopy, but that's all command-line/text mode. One of the first free tools that popped up in my search was: https://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29

The other folks mentioned some useful utilities above, too.

Just a heads up: copying this stuff can take hours, or even days, depending on how trashed the drive is.

6. Once you've grabbed everything you can, you'll need to do a full format on the original drive; I mean a long, deep format (which means all your data is gone forever). It's best to do this and resize the partitions right away. This will show you how many errors you're dealing with, though that's not the final count.

It happens all the time where, after multiple formats, the error count keeps changing—it keeps climbing, or sometimes it even drops. That tells you the drive is unstable and it's definitely on its way out.

My advice? Run 4 or 5 long formats to make sure the error count isn't creeping up. That gives you a little peace of mind that the drive, even if it's damaged, is stable. But yeah, it's all super sketchy.

Anything beyond this requires a level of expertise way above yours and most average repair shops or IT guys. Don't try to play hero if you've got a mountain of important data to save.

PS: if you only had about 2GB of free space left on C during the initial install😛articiji, look, it could just be that your C: drive is totally choked out, which is why you can't even get the thing to boot. By default, all your downloads and those pesky browser cache files dump right onto the C: drive. Eventually, that space gets clogged up and ends up taking up way more than just 2GB.

if you can actually spot it in the BIOS... I'll hand it to you on a silver platter for free

all you really need is the right tools... intelligence isn't strictly required

Jerry Robinson56 said:if you can actually spot it in the BIOS... I'll hand it to you on a silver platter for free

all you really need is the right tools... intelligence isn't strictly required

Man, you can even tackle this if the drive isn't even showing up in the BIOS. I’ve been down that rabbit hole before! One way to fix it is to track down an identical disk and just swap out its board. But honestly? It’s a total headache because even when the part numbers look exactly the same, the actual board versions can be totally different. It's such a gamble.

Jack Cook7 said:Man, you can even tackle this if the drive isn't even showing up in the BIOS. I’ve been down that rabbit hole before! One way to fix it is to track down an identical disk and just swap out its board. But honestly? It’s a total headache because even when the part numbers look exactly the same, the actual board versions can be totally different. It's such a gamble.

Yeah, you can pull that same trick with other media too. Same goes for SD cards. Some pros actually recommend buying two identical drives at once specifically for this reason: if one dies, you just grab the board from the spare, slap it on the dead one, and rescue your data.
Not that many people actually bother. I mean, most folks aren't exactly running out to buy two identical copies of everything they own.

Jack Cook7 said:It’s not quite that simple, man.

Look, I won't get too bogged down in the weeds here, but one or more heads can go south and start reading things "wonky." Maybe the media itself is getting worn out—honestly, Windows 10 can be pretty demanding on hardware, so maybe the drive just got beat up in certain spots. Or the servo mechanism is failing... there's a whole laundry list of stuff that causes this kind of mess.

That sound you're hearing?

a) Is it the infamous "click of death"? (If the drive sounds like "click, click, click...", well, I don't even need to tell you what that means). If that's the case, you've got about five minutes on the clock before your data is gone forever. Your best bet is taking it to a pro, but expect a bill anywhere from $1,000 to $1667 plus the cost of a new drive. In the absolute worst-case scenario, they have to pull the platters and swap them into an identical drive, which is a massive headache.

b) If it's more of a rattling noise, you probably had a head or a stepper motor snap. That means the data on that specific side of the disk is basically unreachable. Again, we're talking platter swaps.

c) If it’s "just" a loud buzzing, it means the servo mechanism and the heads are still working, but they're struggling to grab certain bits of data (for a million different reasons) and are repeatedly trying over and over. There might actually be some hope for saving things here.

d) It’s also possible the main motor is dying; usually, you'll hear that heavy buzzing speed up and slow down.

Here’s the golden rule when you're dealing with drive drama like this:

1. Have you run chkdsk C: yet? (You know what that is, right?)

2. Some PCs have a built-in option in the BIOS Setup to check the drive without messing with the actual content. You can run that just to see how many hardware errors you're looking at. You should probably test the SAS/SATA controller and the RAM too, because bad RAM can cause these exact same headaches. The perk here is that it doesn't need the file system; it bypasses it and talks directly to the drive.

3. DO NOT TOUCH THAT DRIVE ANYMORE. Seriously, stop booting from it. Unplug it as your primary drive and set it as a secondary one. If you aren't sure how to do that, grab a USB/SATA adapter—ideally one with its own power supply or a dual USB setup—pop the drive in there, and plug it in as a USB drive (secondary). If you can't figure that out, don't waste any more time; just take it straight to the data recovery pros.

4. Grab a different drive, hook it up as your primary, install Windows 10, and boot from that as your C: drive.

5. In the Disk Manager on your new Windows 10 setup, you should see the secondary drive (your old, busted one) and both of its partitions, though they'll likely have different letters now. If the new drive is C:, then the old C: will become D:, and the old D: will become E:

6. Copy your files over to the new drive. Honestly, Internet Explorer is terrible at these kinds of transfers because it just crashes when it hits a corrupted file. It doesn't have a "retry" option and it won't leave you a log telling you which files failed or how many errors they had so you could try again later. Find yourself a free utility. Windows has robocopy, but that's all command-line/text mode. One of the first free tools that popped up in my search was: https://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29

The other folks mentioned some useful utilities above, too.

Just a heads up: copying this stuff can take hours, or even days, depending on how trashed the drive is.

6. Once you've grabbed everything you can, you'll need to do a full format on the original drive; I mean a long, deep format (which means all your data is gone forever). It's best to do this and resize the partitions right away. This will show you how many errors you're dealing with, though that's not the final count.

It happens all the time where, after multiple formats, the error count keeps changing—it keeps climbing, or sometimes it even drops. That tells you the drive is unstable and it's definitely on its way out.

My advice? Run 4 or 5 long formats to make sure the error count isn't creeping up. That gives you a little peace of mind that the drive, even if it's damaged, is stable. But yeah, it's all super sketchy.

Anything beyond this requires a level of expertise way above yours and most average repair shops or IT guys. Don't try to play hero if you've got a mountain of important data to save.

PS: if you only had about 2GB of free space left on C during the initial install😛articiji, look, it could just be that your C: drive is totally choked out, which is why you can't even get the thing to boot. By default, all your downloads and those pesky browser cache files dump right onto the C: drive. Eventually, that space gets clogged up and ends up taking up way more than just 2GB.

Since the OP hasn't shown up here in about a week, there's a decent chance they're gone for good.
Still, it would be a shame not to say thanks for such an incredibly thorough post. I didn't quote the whole thing since repeating everything feels redundant, but seriously, thanks on behalf of the original poster.