Failed drive?

Hi all,
For a few weeks my Laptop (Dell Inspiron 1525) had been randomly
freezing, and earlier today it froze. I did what I usually do, which was
restart and wait, but this time it just wouldn't turn on; it kept
telling me it had failed to start correctly. After trying again and
again with the system repair, with no luck, I tried safe mode, which
still wouldn't work.
After exploring different repairs and overviews, I kept getting;
Hard drive - DST Short Test
Test results: Fail
Error code 2000-0142
Msg: Hard drive 1 - Self test unsuccessful. Status 79

I eventually did a complete restore to the factory settings, and it's
worked. I've done some Googling about the error, and from what I can
gather it's an issue about the physical drive itself failing?
I know nothing about hardware, so I'm in over my head. The warranty ran
out on this the other week, so I'm not covered. Does the drive need
replacing? Are the problems going to start again? I'm a student without
much money, but I need my laptop for work, so I'd really appreciate it
if someone can point me in the right direction as to what I need to do
quickly.
Thanks for reading


--
Hanlet

Hi,

Yes, it's failing. Yes, it needs to be replaced. Now. Failing drives don't
get better, they worsen - rapidly. The longer you wait, the more likely that
you will not be able to recover anything currently on the drive and the
better the chances that the faulty drive may cause damage to other
components.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

"Hanlet" <> wrote in message
news:...
>
> Hi all,
> For a few weeks my Laptop (Dell Inspiron 1525) had been randomly
> freezing, and earlier today it froze. I did what I usually do, which was
> restart and wait, but this time it just wouldn't turn on; it kept
> telling me it had failed to start correctly. After trying again and
> again with the system repair, with no luck, I tried safe mode, which
> still wouldn't work.
> After exploring different repairs and overviews, I kept getting;
> Hard drive - DST Short Test
> Test results: Fail
> Error code 2000-0142
> Msg: Hard drive 1 - Self test unsuccessful. Status 79
>
> I eventually did a complete restore to the factory settings, and it's
> worked. I've done some Googling about the error, and from what I can
> gather it's an issue about the physical drive itself failing?
> I know nothing about hardware, so I'm in over my head. The warranty ran
> out on this the other week, so I'm not covered. Does the drive need
> replacing? Are the problems going to start again? I'm a student without
> much money, but I need my laptop for work, so I'd really appreciate it
> if someone can point me in the right direction as to what I need to do
> quickly.
> Thanks for reading
>
>
> --
> Hanlet