I probably know the answer to this but I'm just looking for some hope here. I started my computer today and when windows was booting my hard drive made a noise similar to that of trying to start a car that's already running. I take this as a sign my hd is ready to crash. It's a WD 80gb se, my second one. I've only had this one for about six months. The last one wouldn't work after I changed cases. I could of possibly damaged it even though I was extremly careful with everything. But it was acting kinda funny before hand. Well anyway my question is it for sure a sign my hd is going to crap or can I hope there's nothing wrong? If it does crash I think I'll stop buying wd since it would be the second time in a year one of their hds crashed on me.

This could be a sign of a HD nearing death but it may as well be just a bad sector or a driver/controller glitch.

Run a thorough (non destructive) test on your HD using the diagnostic software from WD and back up your critical data just in case.