Failing HardDrive?

[Nutdotnet]

My buddy has a 12gig 5400rpm Western Digital Hard Drive. About three weeks ago or so it started clicking. It will click ever so often, say once every 5-10 minutes for anywhere from 5 seconds to 30 seconds, and during that time the computer is unusable. Once the clicking stops the computer runs fine again. Its kind of hard to describe the clicking noise but it is a slow..."click......click......click...."

For the last three weeks it hasn't gotten worse or anything.....

What do you all think?
Thanks!

 

[4824guy]

Run a scan disk on it to see if it reports any errors, then be sure to test the HD using that WD software called Lifeguard tools. That will test the HD out better than scan disk will. It can be downloaded for free at the WD web site.

 

[S0me1X]

Does a scandisk surface scan find any bad sectors? If you can, back up the data immediately. Try a low level format.

 

[Nutdotnet]

Well he just got a new hard drive tonight so I was going to mess around with his old one ot see what was up.

So you guys say do first a scan-disk, should I do the longer more thorough scan-disk?

Thanks!

 

[Nutdotnet]

Just hopin for some more advice, help, etc...

Thanks again!