Is my Hard Drive dying? It's an internal 80gb IDE hard drive at 5400 RPM that came with my Dimension 3000. It's about 3 years old now, has gamed its entire lifetime, and is now making very pronounced seeking clicking noises. On occasion, my HDD LED on the front panel will stay lit for 10 minutes or more, making my computer run like a dead turtle, while nothing is actually supposed to take that long. No, it's not my virus scans, I can run those and do something else without being this slow.

Short answer-Yes. The less you run it the better until you get a replacement and transfer what you want or start backing up files to CD / DVD's
Mark

I agree, backup immediately! Then get a utility from the website of the manufacturer of the hard drive to diagnose the drive - that'll tell you if it's dying or not (but the clicking sound is a nearly universal death knell for a hard drive).

I'm on it now.. and I know thats not what you reccommended, but the activity light is constantly on pretty much. It never turns off, it may begin to turn off but it gets started right back up. Can this thing cause my computer to be really slow?

The only reason I said don't use it is because you're increasing the chance of damaging the drive's contents before you can back it up. If that isn't a concern, go ahead and use it
Mark

Talked with my dad, the whiz. He says its just an older hard drive and it will click and be loud as it may. Can someone send me the diagnostic software for the Western Digital WD800BB? I tried downloading from their site but my clicks don't do anything.

While I hate to disagree with your dad, the WD800BB is no louder than any other hard drive. And a clicking hard drive is an invitation to disaster!

Since you can't download the diagnostics from Western Digital, I'd suggest trying the built in Dell diagnostics (it's either F10, F11, or F12 as you boot up) to see if they can tell you more about the drive.

Just to be on the safe side, buy yourself a new IDE hard drive. They're fairly cheap nowadays as SATA hard drives are starting to heat up the market. You may want to consider upping the capacity so you don't run out of space.

Also, you should always run maintenance tasks on your hard drive, such programs like CCleaner are excellent in getting rid of useless junk and creating more space. One more, but very important, task is to defragment it. Defragging is notorious for taking its sweet time to do the job, but in the end, it's worth it for the health of your computer.

Do you guys think it would be more practical to buy a SATA hard drive with an IDE jumper cable since I plan on getting a new SATA mobo soon and I want the speed when it's time to upgrade?

If money is an issue, an IDE drive will be cheaper (and most mobo's have an IDE connector on them even if they have SATA). If you purchase a SATA drive you'll also need to purchase a SATA controller. They're not really expensive, but you can't use SATA without it (on and IDE only mobo).

What does the SATA controller do and when do I need it? If I have an IDE Jumper instead of a SATA plug, will I need it?

I have no idea what an IDE to SATA jumper is - but the SATA drive will have different connectors than an IDE drive.

Sorry maybe using the wrong terminology here the plan is to use a SATA-IDE converter box and then get a SATA drive.

It's the terminology that'll kill us!

It looks like what you're trying to do is to fit the SATA drive inside an enclosure that'll plug into one of your USB ports. Is that correct? If so, that'll work for the drive - but making the operating system (XP) work from it will be pretty durned difficult.

If not, could you point me at a description of what you're looking at and we can work from there.

Here's a description of what I want to do, I know the tech exists but I'm too lazy to find you some links.
I am getting a SATA HDD. It has a 320GB capacity and runs at 3.0
I am getting a small device that goes inside my PC that will take in the SATA plug and put out an IDE plug and convert it to an IDE signal.

Savvy?

Wouldn't a SATA controller card work? It's a card that goes into a PCI slot and you can hook you drive into it. They also have IDE controller cards for adding more IDE devices
Mark

Like this but the other way around:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822998008

I don't have a PCI to spare with my current setup. I have three: one for my vid card, the other two for its fan (external, not connected to the card itself).