Old HD boot error

[cuog]

Well I havent been around PCMECH in almost a month due to alot of robotics stuff and HW but my HD on my laptop has messed up and I need some help on it,

When I try to boot to win98 my laptop does its normal booting thing then the HD starts making a rythmic sound almost identical to the one it makes when it is defraing but it wont continue in boot at all. I tried booting to safemode but that ddnt work ame problem, then i was able to boot to safemode comand prompt only, when i typed in dir in the windows folder i got an error stating that the device could not be read from abort/ignore/retry(something like that)

any advice, should i format the HD and reinstall windows? or is the HD fried

Thanks,
Cuog

[doctorgonzo]

Sounds like the hard drive is going. What brand/model is it? I would recommend going to the drive manufacturer's website and downloading their diagnostic tools to see if the drive really is bad.

[cuog]

Its a toshiba 1.34 gig HD for computer # 6 in my sig so with its age its likely to just be dead but i will look for the diag just in case

[glc]

There are no Toshiba diags available - I use the Hitachi DFT to test Toshibas. It can test it but not repair or zero it. You can zero it with DBAN.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
http://dban.sourceforge.net/