Starting with question number one, no you cannot repair your hard drive. When they go they're gone. They are pretty cheap nowadays, way cheaper than paying for getting the data off a dead drive. Many companies make external hard drives in various sizes. Maxtor's is a good one, and I know Iomega has a bundled program with theirs that I believe they call "onestep backup".  If your old drive doesn't fail, it should be relatively easy to copy what's on it to a large external drive.  Which one is best for you depends upon how much you want to spend, and other factors particular to your current setup.

Replacing a hard drive is fairly easy. Most name brands include step by step instructions for formatting and partitioning new drives. You need to set the jumpers on the new drive for master, slave, or whatever your system requires.  All of that is in the easy to follow instructions.  You could set up your old drive as a slave and try to copy it to the new drive, but if failure is so imminent, you may lose everything if you don't hurry to get your data off of it.  Having a large external drive for backups on a regular basis is a good idea.




Denzal Cummings <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>My hard disk has deteriorated to the point that it is about to fail.
>The following error message now  appears: "1720 Smart Hard Drive detects
>imminent failure.  Your Hard Drive is detecting imminent failure.  To
>ensure no data loss, back-up contents and replace this hard drive.
>Attribute failed: #10"
>
>The HDD is a 37.2 Gigabyte Maxtor 5T040H4 (with 32 Gigs used).  It is
>running on a Compaq Deskpro with a 997 MHz, Intel Pentium III chip, and
>190 MB of SDRAM.  My operating environment is Window 2000 Professional
>5.00.2195 (Service Pack 4)
>
>I have a lot of video and audio files on the  machine, in addition to my
>data files.  I also have a lot of one-off  programs and add-ons which I
>want to save.  I therefore would like to know the following:
>    1.  Can I repair the HDD or must I replace it?
>    2.   Is there a program which will allow me literally to copy
>everything on my hard drive                         altogether, as one
>unit of data, and then copy it to a replacement drive, again in one
>block of             data?
>    3.  What is the best way (i.e the procedure) for replacing the HDD
>(e.g I am thinking of buying an             Iomega External Drive,
>copying all items on my HDD onto this, replacing the internal HDD
>        in the Compaq, and then copying back from my External HDD to the
>new internal HDD)?
>    4.   Are there any particular issues or problems I need to guard
>against when trying to replace                 my internal HDD and is
>the Iomega the best External Drive to buy for the above task?
>
>This is very urgent so I would appreciate a speedy reply
>
>

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