HDD going down

So my hard drive has been slipping downstream for a few weeks now. My computer occasionally crashes completely - won't react to anything and when I reboot it just goes Detecting IDE drives.... and stands there. Sometimes it crashes while starting up Windows. I'm pretty sure it's all HDD related. Everything seems fine most of the time though. But now I hear this tiny little split second glitch when I'm listening to music. - every few second things go "buzz" for a very, very short time. It's not just music I think - it possibly does that while doing anything at all, though I'm not sure. My HDD is running at a pretty high temperature - doesn't drop under 45 C and reaches up to 53 - possibly even more. Should I just get a new HDD?

^+1. Yeah, really.

its a hitchaci hard drive. pretty old too. 80gb means an old hard drive.

yes temperature may have a role in your pc. does it shut down, cause usually that is the result of pc overheating. download a program like speedfan and find out what your temps are.

check in task manager what program is being used the most when the useage tripples. i forgot what tab it's under, i'm not using winodws right now so i can't let you know. but you can see which porgrams taxes the system the most. maybe it's spyware/virus that you can scan for too.