hard drive problem

[Oscar1613]

over the past week my computer has been crashing alot... someone suggested that my hard drive might be dying so i should back everything up and see if it can complete a format... if it cant, then theres something wrong with it and needs to be sent back for replacement... so last night i deleted all the junk i dont need and picked out all the essentials to back up on CDs. well today i decided to try something... i felt the hard drive and it was very warm, so i took it out of the case along with the fan i was using as an intake fan, and pointed the fan directly at it... so i left it run for a couple hours like that and it was rock solid, but when i took the fan away for a few mins the random crashes would return. so now im fairly confident this is a heat problem with my hard drive (its a 30 gig 5400rpm western digital). seeing how its a 5400rpm, should it need a hard drive cooler? or is this a sign of a deeper problem and i should just return it for a new one?

 

[Oscar1613]

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