It turns out my harddrive is indeed failing, it’s down to 56% health according to HDS. I’m incredibly lucky that I have so many back ups. Platter drives, solid state, internal, external, the cloud. But I’m just unable to progress my research until I have a stable boot drive and that means I can’t make any mistakes in the meantime. It used to be very easy. Format a drive and boot from the mobo.
I can’t afford the time, health, and money this is taking to fix.
I really can’t.