I have a HP Windows 10 laptop. Recently I suspected that I contracted some kind of malware on it off the internet, and I didn't want to take any risks, so took the laptop to a tech shop to get it fully formatted. the technician tried to perform a format and reinstall, but couldn't, and then he said now he couldn't even get the hard drive to boot or get detected. He said my hard drive had failed and I needed a new one. Now, I must say, while I was using the laptop, several days even after the infection, I never once had a problem booting the computer. Also, my laptop and hard disk are pretty new, not even a year old. It seems unlikely to me that the hard drive would fail, unless the malware caused it to fail.
My question is, what should be my course of action? Get a new hard drive? Because I know now malware can damage hard drive, but I also don't really want to get duped by some tech guy. He tried to format in front of me, and I saw he was using HP Recovery manager to do a factory image recovery. Are there other ways I could try to do a complete clean format? Maybe that would work? I want to exhaust all my options of trying to format the computer before springing for that new drive. Also, is there a way to check the hard drive health, should I be able to perform a format anyways? Not very well versed in this, but I'm learning. Help will be greatly appreciated.
