Fixing a lenovo Z61t Boot Up Error - A disk read error occurred

This lenovo Z61t had an error message "A disk read error occurred Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart" at boot up. Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del gave the same error message again.

Running Drive Fitness Test, it gave a disposition code 0x70. I took the hard drive out and connected it to another laptop using USB adapter. The hard drive could not be recognized from Windows OS. I ran Ultimate Boot CD. It also could not be recognized.

I ran HDD Regenerator trial version on the hard drive. It reported that the bad sector could be regenerated. The trial version fixed one bad sector at a time. I tried more than 10 times and the bad sectors could be regenerated. After fixing more than 10 bad sectors, the hard drive could be recognized in another laptop via the USB adapter. Also, I could view the disk property but still could not open the disk to see the contents.

I used Hard disk utility from Ultimate Boot to scan the hard drive. It hang after scanning 53 minutes. The scan showed a very high % of bad sectors. It was not worthwhile to regenerate the hard drive. Recommendation was given to the owner to buy a new hard drive and load the OS from recovery disc.