Ordered up a new drive as I suspect it's dying.
Had issues with XP with random hang ups. Usuallyu firefox and IE with pretty much constant HDD activity.
So I decided to upgrade to Vista and consider Raid (which I decided against) and stick to my old 80Gb HDD (Seagate, at least 5 or 6 years old).
During the Vista install, one of the reboots got to post and no further with a clicking noise from which I can only assume was the Seagate. Rebooted and it booted up. All good for a few days although seems to be really slow at present. Lots of HDD activity and very slow to copy files from Seagate to Samsung spinpoint and visa versa.
Put the machine into Hibernation earlier and it wouldn't boot. Said a file was missing (can't remember which one) and mentioned the registry was missing or corrupt.
Tried to recover using installation CD and it wouldn't recognise drive. Third attempt it did.
I'm pretty sure the disk is pretty much dead. Intend to do a full back up tomorrow (have all the important stuff already), and I've ordered a replacement drive.
So is it dead? Is it possible to backup the disc (if it doesn't die) using Vista backup to another HDD and restore the complete drive to a new disk?
The other worrying thing I suppose is the motherboard could be borked? Have yet to check cables (lovely night shift......)
Had issues with XP with random hang ups. Usuallyu firefox and IE with pretty much constant HDD activity.
So I decided to upgrade to Vista and consider Raid (which I decided against) and stick to my old 80Gb HDD (Seagate, at least 5 or 6 years old).
During the Vista install, one of the reboots got to post and no further with a clicking noise from which I can only assume was the Seagate. Rebooted and it booted up. All good for a few days although seems to be really slow at present. Lots of HDD activity and very slow to copy files from Seagate to Samsung spinpoint and visa versa.
Put the machine into Hibernation earlier and it wouldn't boot. Said a file was missing (can't remember which one) and mentioned the registry was missing or corrupt.
Tried to recover using installation CD and it wouldn't recognise drive. Third attempt it did.
I'm pretty sure the disk is pretty much dead. Intend to do a full back up tomorrow (have all the important stuff already), and I've ordered a replacement drive.
So is it dead? Is it possible to backup the disc (if it doesn't die) using Vista backup to another HDD and restore the complete drive to a new disk?
The other worrying thing I suppose is the motherboard could be borked? Have yet to check cables (lovely night shift......)
your mobo should have sata ports 
i hope