Dell IDE Hard Drive Diagnostic: Fail!

Hi Guys,

Let me start by warning you that I am not a whiz when it comes to computers!

My Dell Dimension 4600 has been getting a little cantankerous of late, to the point where it failed to boot up today (I'm on the laptop!).

I've looked for solutions, and the end result after getting a "blue screen" with an "Unmountable Boot Volume" message is the following:

IDE Hard Drive Diagnostics
Primary SATA
Drive 0: No device
Secondary SATA
Drive 0: No device

Primary IDE
Drive 0: WDC WD600BB-75CAAO - Fail. Return Code: 7
Drive 1: Maxtor 6E040l0 - Pass

etc...

Is this the dreaded hard drive crash?

Any advice gratefully received!

Angoos

It is either a dead hard drive or the motherboard has stopped talking to it. My bet would be the drive, given the symptoms.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q297185

Your drive is dead or dying. Most drives carry a 5 year warranty. I hoped you backed your data up.

Thanks for the replies.

Incredibly (for me!) I managed to get the old girl up and running in Safe Mode, and while there appears to be one or more errors on my C hard drive, everything appears to be operating normally ...

My next question is: Should I replace the hard drive anyway - it must be about 4.5 years old? And when buying a replacement hard drive, is there anything I should look for?

Cheers.

Angoos

Before you do ANYTHING, back up your files.
Then, if you have any doubts about the drive's reliability, replace it.
If it is of an age it will be an IDE drive so replace it with another IDE drive (not SATA) of the same size or bigger.