System Failure - Hard Drive finally dead?

[tehsn1p3r]

So, this morning my computer crashed out of nowhere. I run Windows 7, and missed the blue screen with error info before it restarted. Anyway, it would not start back up and went straight to the Windows repair system. After 2 attempts at a system restore, it restarted once more, the repair ran for nearly an hour, and then told me nothing could be done.

I proceeded to run a memory check, no problems there. Finally, I decided that it would need a reformat, and tried copying from one hard drive to another via the command prompt (yo6666u can access it without windows starting up) and I was greeted with a cyclic redundancy check.

Now, I've tried reinstalling Windows 7. The first time it failed. The second time, it went through the main install just fine, but hung on the "preparing to your computer for first use" screen, and told me that the install was unsuccessful and that I should try again.

It's currently reinstalling a third time. Not even done expanding files yet.

Sooo, this is all really weird. The hard drive in question is a 3-year-old 250GB Western Digital IDE drive. Is it finally dead? Or is this something else?

Thanks in advance!

Specs
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
3GB DDR2 Corsair RAM
630W Power Supply
nVidia GeForce 260GT w/ 896mb vRAM
570GB Storage via 1X Western Digital 250GB IDE and 1X Western Digital 320GB SATA

 

[buwish]

It sounds like it is going. Has it made any odd/loud clicking noises of late? If so, it may be time to invest in a SATA drive. If there is vital info on the old drive, you can buy an enclosure and attempt to get the files off of it.

 

[nforce4max]

I would bother with an enclosure unless you want to waist the money. Buy a new drive and install Win 7 with out any of the other drives installed then once completed drivers and all reinstall the (just do cables no need to remove them from case). Then try to salvage your data if any at that stage either than that the drive is trash. If it loses data and gets the clicks (typical preamp failure) or corrupts then junk it.