Is my HDD dead?

[GaleForce]

Lately my computer has been locking up and sometimes outright freezing. At one point, I had to restart the computer manually and when I did it was like CMOS forgot which harddrive to boot from. I had to go back into the BIOS and set the harddrive priority (not boot priority) again, and it worked fine. Then today I was listening to some music in iTunes and suddenly it freezes up again, and I go to do a manual restart. Now when I try to turn the PC on it can't find the drive. Auto-detect in the BIOS isn't detecting a drive at the channel it should be at, although it is taking much longer for it to detect (negatively) at that channel than other channels that have no drive. The drive is a 10,000 RPM 74gb barracuda.

 

[Oldie]

Unplug any other devices connected to the board, and try a new cable (if that requires a jumper change, make sure you do). Sometimes it's a glitchy CD-Rom that can cause problems. If it still doesn't work, find another computer, and see if the HD will run alright in that one, if the answer is no, then it's probably gone where so many drives have gone before.....

Also, are you sure that's a 10K drive? I don't think they make any 10K's outside of the Cheetah/Savio SCSI line. Link

 

[GaleForce]

Yeah I'm sure its a 10k... its a seagate barracuda. SATA drive.