I am having issues booting my computer and I have attempted multiple things, including booting into Linux to try and save files from there. However, I had issue with copying the files and I have begun to suspect HD Failure. My question is how can I test if the HD failed?
The HD is an internal Seagate 1TB.
If possible, move the drive to an external enclosure or add to a known good system. From there you can run diagnostics and/or try and recover files.
The issue is possibly other hardware and by installing with working hardware, you will elimninate a variable or two. Seagate has a diagnostic that runs under Windows that can easily test the drive
If your harddrive supports SMART, you can use gsmartcontrol to perform some selftests which show you the state of the drive.
A simple test for harddisk failures would be the following command:
sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null
Replace /dev/sda with the device name of your harddrive and be certain not to type something in wrong, as this command can, if used wrong, destroy all of your data. If this command triggers any device errors or failures, you can be very certain of hardware failure.
