Starting today, for no aparent reason, during the initial check-up, right when xp is supposed to start loading, this message apears: “WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure maybe imminent.“ After that nothing loads and I have the choice of F1 (continue), F8 (bios) or DEL. Until now the system has been starting after pressing F1 but it behaves weird, it doesn’t crash but it feels unstable. Do I need a new HDD? - Both a chkdsk and full scan cannot detect anything wrong. - Could the whole HDD be damaged or just a small sector or cluster? - Can I keep using this “damaged“ drive as a slave for storage and just instal a new one to run xp from? What should I do? - Any tips? Because I have never instaled or changed a HDD. - How do you format it and install the OS on it? - It’s just a standard, non-partitioned, FAT32. Is a new Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 120GB / 7200 rpm for about $99 US a good option? Thanks in advance. Cheers.

Find out who makes the drive by actually opening the case and looking at it. Then go to the appropriate Website and download the diagnostic tool for it. It usually installs on a floppy and runs without Windows. Here are some links to the popular ones- Western Digital Maxtor IBM Jimi_l

Thanks jimi. Yeah, it's a Seagate U6 40GB 5400rpm drive, that much I know. Let me check the page. http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools Now let me figure this tool out and run it. I'll keep you posted, thanks again. Cheers.

Rats, I almost listed Seagate too. Usually you download the program and run it. It should prompt you to insert a floppy and then it will make it bootable. Some of the new ones will actually run from Windows however. Jimi_l

"Both a chkdsk and full scan cannot detect anything wrong." Keep in mind the possibility that you have some other problem and the drive is ok. Try a memory test. Doc memory tester

something you might also want to do is defrag the drive, that usually finds bad sectors and can work around/with them.

ok, let me give this Doc Memory Tester a try, I'll keep you posted on what it finds. After booting with and running the Seagate Seatools application it seems that there IS something wrong with the drive because a few sectors are "unreadable" and the tool cannot complete the scan properly. --And NOW the drive it self is starting to randomly "click" ...click, click click.-- You know, that click that it makes everytime you put the system to "standby" mode and back. Oh, well time for a new primary drive I guess, I'll just keep this one as a slave till it stops working. thanks guys. Now what? I have never changed a drive? Is that hitachi drive any good? I think I'll buy it on thursday. Cheers.