My hard drive is dying, isn't it?

[Tygur]

My hard drive has occasionally been making a strange noise lately. Actually, it could've been doing it for longer. I had to keep the computer opened up all day for the past few days, otherwise I probably would've never noticed. I suppose it can be described as a click, but if it is, it's a "big" click (low pitched?). It would just do it once in a while.

Some time ago, I downloaded a free SMART reader, called HDD Health, and it's been running in the background. Since I was hearing this "click", I decided to check my hard drive status. The TEC dates (basically the estimated time of death for the hd) for several attributes were calculated to be that very day. Today, it's saying it'll die today, and I got a pretty good guess what the TEC date will be tomorrow.

These are the attributes with the TEC dates:
Spin Retry Count
Calibration Retry Count
Power Cycle Count
Reallocation Event Count
Current Pending Sector Count
Off-line Scan Uncorrectable Sector Count
Ultra ATA CRC Error Count
Write Error Rate

I've made some recent hardware changes, so I wonder if it's just power issues.

System specs:
Sparkle 350 Watt Power Supply
Abit KX7-333 Motherboard
Athlon XP 2600+ (just got this not long ago)
Western Digital 80GB (the one with the problems)
Seagate 120 GB (i just got this one)

By the way, the 80GB was a slave drive to a 40GB, but when I got the 120GB, the 40GB was taken out, and the 80GB was made the master.

Other specs that may or may not be relevant:
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
BFG GeForce4 Ti4600
DVD-ROM drive
CD-RW drive
1GB PC2700 Memory
Some unnamed network card
3 case fans (the ones that came with the case)
Really Big 80mm Delta cooling the processor
Vantec Spectrum Card Cooler (just got this cause the fan on the video card died, which is actually why the case was opened recently)



So does it look like I'm gonna be buying another hard drive soon, or could there possibly be some remote chance that this hard drive can live on?

Thanks in advance for any replies

[thekingofpain]

Download their "tools" to diagnose your hardrives condition from the WD website...

[Tygur]

I did, but I only ran the quick test. The hard drive passed. The hard drive isn't dead yet. I'm still booting Windows off it, and I still have files on it, though the important ones are now backed up. Even the SMART data says the hard drive is ok now. It's just apparently supposed to die soon.

[Ryanoffski]

it might be a power issue. When I had a 300w PSU in my computer, my hard drive began clicking until the PSU overloaded. Then I put in a 500w and it's been fine since w/ no clicks.

[Tygur]

I keep thinking that if this hard drive keeps working like this, then maybe the problem is something else. Today, I had my computer on for a while and came back to find myself clicking OK to error messages saying that Delayed Writes have failed for various drives and files. All the drives and files were on the "good" hard drive. The hard drive light was on (not blinking). I had to turn my computer off and on to get things back to normal. A simple restart didn't even fix things.

I'm wondering if the hard drive cable and/or motherboard are really to blame.

[bombledmonk]

I had the clicking thing happen to me and it was true that the HD was failing. Not saying that it is, but your assumption could be quite right.