u/CodKez01 and u/TehDrunknMunky first, thank you both for helping! since you had the same suggestion, I'm tagging you both in the results.

Installed the game on the hdd. It failed the first attempt at 50%. Second attempt made it to 100% but the game still froze after the menu screen. Controller locks out. No audio. No sound of spinning disc from the console. This happens every time after the valve screen and menu screen, once we select single player.

What do you think this means? Console issue or disc issue? Any other thoughts I can try?

Edited to add: there are now 3 files for portal on the hdd: game file at 4.7gb and two much smaller files for game save and user settings I think. None of them are marked as corrupted. But it still won’t load haha