Is my hdd going bad?

[Tullphan]

I was doing some basic internet surfing between numerous tabs inOpera & Firefox when I started hearing a light click, then a spinning. I finally narrowed the noise down to one of my hard drives (I have a primary & secondary drive).
I had to do a reset to get my system restarted as it had locked up on me. It stayed on the motherboard logo screen for awhile, then I got a drive failure message. I hit "F1" to continue, then it locked up again on my Grub screen. I shut my system down to check for possibly a loose connection, checked to see if the drives were too hot (they weren't...& they shouldn't be w/a 120mm fan in front of them), then restarted.
This time the system booted up normally & I haven't heard that sound again...YET.
Should I start backing up some of my software onto DVD? hehehe
BTW...the primary drive is a Seagate 120gb & the secondary is a WD 160gb...JB model.

 

[Auric]

First guess would be der loose power connection as said and prolly on secondary since the OS didn't crap out right away. May wanna run the manufacturers' diagnostics utilities. If you haven't backed up already then it's kinda late to be thinking about it when a drive seems to be failing, especially if contributing to system flakiness and double-plus especiallly if relying upon slow DVD.

 

[Tullphan]

This is the first time it's ever happened, if that's any help...or consolation on my part.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Tullphan
Should I start backing up some of my software onto DVD?

Yes, you should be backing up. Even if your hard drives AREN'T acting up. Hard drives fail, without warning, all the time.

As auric noted, these symptoms match what happens with a loose power connection. Loose connections and bad data cables can cause weird things to happen. I'd make backups (and continue doing so from now on), tighten the power connections and change the data cables (especially IDE), and see what happens.