I have a HP Pavilion DV4 multimedia laptop, running Windows7 ultimate, and my nephew called me and says his computer won´t open to the desktop. I had him bring it to a tech store and the technician didn´t even look at the laptop and said it needed a new hard drive. The tech said he knew just by what the boy told him but we live in Peru and these techs are not the type to have to look for the problem, the solution is change the hardware or the OS. When you push the power button, the first thing you see is the F2 initiation screen that says: SMART hard disk failure The determination of SMART hard disk detected imminent failure . To ensure that there is no loss of data , perform an immediate backup of the contents and run the hard disk test in the diagnosis of the system . Hard Disk 1 ( 301 ) F2 - System Diagnostics ENTER - continue start up For more information , visit : www.hp.com / go / techcenter / startup When I run the diagnostics it stops at 9% but then you reboot and press enter on the same screen and you go directly to the desktop as though nothing is wrong. You can erase any program but cannot add anything. It can read everything on the hard drive and programs operate that are already on the hard drive. When I first turned it on, it connected to the internet but now has a caution sign with an exclamation mark. I understand what that is because I have a netbook from the same house with the same problem but thats another issue. Can anyone help?

As it says, you need to backup all of your data right now. S.M.A.R.T Hard Disk Failure means that there is a hardware problem which you need to bring to manufacturer or other Services to fix it. Hardware problems could be fixed by Firmware upgrade, but most of them, like yours probably won't. You can't do anything about it unless the problem is caused by the cables inside your laptop. First, back up all of your data. Then, change your hard drive. Don't wait till your hard drive becomes unreadable.. At that moment, you will have to spend some money to recover your important data."Everything we do is dictated by motive."

In this case the tech is right, the hard drive is failing and needs to be replaced. You should copy all the important data off the drive while it's still possible then plan on replacing it. If your nephew never created a set of recovery disks you'll have to order them from HP because it's probably too late to create them now.

Consider buying a better laptop. I had a Pavillion (utter poo). MACs won the award of running Windows 7 the best. If you are using bitlocker on the HDD make sure you make a note of the key In order to optimize your next HDD's life run REGULAR maintenance procedures. MSCONFIG- disable start-up programs Disk clean-up- remove tmp and unused files Disk Defrag- consolidates your existing files into closer sectors Hope this helps in the future :)