Laptop no longer booting from HDD or recovery USB

zbook said:

Nice progress.
Having upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 10 during the free period should have created a digital license on the Microsoft servers.
So you should be able to replace the drive.
For major hardware changes, for example a motherboard, it is recommended to have created a Microsoft account.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...ardware-change
Enable and Disable Driver Verifier in Windows 10 Windows 10 Tutorials
How to Use Your Free Windows 10 License After Changing Your PC’s Hardware

It was only possible with all of your advice and suggestions; it has been fair learning curve for me. Thanks for those links. I will likely wait till next month's paycheck to buy a HDD given that currently, with the persistent live Ubuntu, I am able to do most of my work while saving to another USB.

I kept Badblocks running overnight and it has hit over 20000 lines on the text file! I can't remember how many bytes to a block the NTFS HDD has, but that seems a fair chunk of the drive.

Kyhi said:

If you going to Opt for a New Drive - Purchase a SSD Drive...
And you will not regret it..

I was going to but was discouraged by the $/MB. Then I found out i can get an ODD caddy and stick a second HDD there. So now my plan is to get a 128GB SSD as a boot drive and stick a 2TB Barracuda for my data. That should give me the best of both worlds as I don't have a desktop and this is my only workstation.