Inspiron 660s, Windows 10 update, HDD failure

Sounds like just a hard drive failure.  Whether upgrading to Win 10 caused this or not ????

The error is detected on the POST (Power ON Self Test) so it would appear to just be a hard failure.  Upgrading would not normally cause this error.  

The hard drive will have to be replaced and then Windows installed anew. Here is the procedure from the tenforums.com on downloading and creating a bootable Win 10 flash drive with the Media Creation tool (Option 1).

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2376-create-bootable-usb-flash-drive-install-windows-10-a.html

Hard Drives are mechanical and like the brakes on your car. They DIE. Its not a matter of IF they die its a matter of when. A 660S is over 5 years old so this is not uncommon. Has absolutely nothing to do with WINDOWS 10 or an upgrade. The good news is that you can download Windows 10 1803 media and reinstall without having to buy a new copy of windows. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

When you start the install if it asks for a key tell it you don't have one. Then once you get online it will be re activated.

I have same issue, it only happened when windows asked me to restart the machine after updates.

Why is this happening? there must be more people that this has happened too?

Do I need to buy a new computer? How would I install this on the computer that doesn't allow me to do anything on it?

Do I need to buy new physical hardware to replace the failed hard drive? Would I need a whole new computer?

Its a physical replacement of the hard drive with a new one.  Then installation of Windows and drivers as detailed earlier.  However, from your comments it would best to take it to a qualified PC repair shop and have them check it out and verify that the hard drive failed and then have them install a new one and Windows 10. 

New Drive is about $50

https://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Desktop-7200rpm-Internal-Drive/dp/B013JPKUHA

If I replace the hard drive, then I would assume all the data on the replaced hard drive would be gone, correct?

Yes, everything on the hard drive will be gone.  

Too late now, but if you have never backed up the data to some other external media (e.g. disc or hard drive) this is a lesson on doing backups.  Not for IF the backup is needed but for WHEN.   I use the free (and popular) Macrium Reflect and do periodic full hard disc images (drive backups), all partitions, to an external hard drive.  If my drive should fail I can restore to a new drive in about an hour.  

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

Most people are not willing to pay for data to be recovered.

Data recovery specialists charged with extracting data from a cracked, charred 400MB Seagate drive aboard the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia have done their duty, retrieving 99% of the information written to the disk. The Columbia burned up on re-entry on Feb. 1, 2003, over Louisiana and Texas. Computerworld reports that the drive was found in a dry lake bed and handed to a team at Kroll Ontrack about six months after the tragedy.

If they can get data from that drive yours should be easy.  Its not however cheap.   $350 for diagnosis and $4000 for data recovery.   They have done this for my work and got 100 percent of the data back.

https://www.ontrack.com/

 

Thanks a lot for your responses, I will check out that program once I am back on a new computer. 

Very interesting info, never knew about any of that. Thanks again for the all your responses, informative.

I get this every time there are new Windows 10 updates on an Inspiron 15. I'm on the beta channel and get new builds about once a month.  Windows updates, makes changes and performs a soft reset.  BIOS no longer detects the physical drive. Dell Diag doesn't detect the drive.  But if I power off, wait a few seconds and power up, Windows begins to rollback the changes and computer works normally after that.  I updated to the latest BIOS from June or July 2018.

Your post has nothing to do with this particular problem and even in the wrong section since this section is for desktops and you have a laptop.

However, I'm in the Windows Insider program and get the advanced Win 10 versions and they have never caused the problem you report.