Suggestions for accessing a hard drive

My friend asked me to look at his computer because it was asking him to install an operating system. He was running Windows 8.1 on a Hewlett-Packard Pavilion 15 laptop with 8Gb of ram and an AMD A6 processor. I start it up and yes, that's what it's asking for. Says hard drive is in imminent failure and to backup the data. Hard disk (3F0). I do a purge (pull the battery and hold the power button for 20 sec). It takes me straight to the uefi. I do a hard disk test and it fails. I pulled the hard drive and tried to connect it to my computer using a sata to usb connector. As soon as I switched it on it crashed my computer. So I says to myself "Let's use Knoppix". Nope. Knoppix can't mount it. So I can't access the data. I figure I might as well forge ahead and see if Windows 8.1 can repair it. (I know). So I put Windows 8.1 on my usb stick, go into the bios and change it to boot first and ... nothing. I get the same screen of imminent hard drive failure. I am unable to change the boot order and get it to boot from the any other drives.

My friend likes to tell me he doesn't use it for very much. He checks his email, goes on facebook, looks stuff up, listens to music. But his browser will have a half a dozen pages open with a dozen tabs on each. He'll have Winamp open and going, several pages of Youtube open and sitting on pause, while watching the news or reading various articles. All at once. When I opened the back to retrieve the hard drive, it was almost blackened, or like sooty or greasy black. My guess is he has put that little A6 through it's paces. He bought this hard drive a year ago. At this point, I can't think of what else to do unless anyone here has any suggestions. I don't often see it where I can't recover the data and I hate being defeated. Even a confirmation that there is nothing else to do is helpful.

Thank you for any and all suggestions you may have.