Storage Solutions Is my hdd dead

[cyrux]

I have two hdds installed on my system, both working in PATA. The first which is set of secondary master is a WD 160 Gb and the second on is a seagate 20Gb which i purchased 5 years back.
I have a software called hdd inspector which monitors the tempearture of hdds and other details too. Since few days when ever i started up my system the hdd inspector gave me a message that the 20GB harddisk has reached its lower threshold level and showed up the SMART details. I ignored this message but 2 days back when i switched on the system it failed to boot in XP.On the next restart it fialed to boot and the mother board gave beeps.At the third restart i coud get in XP but hdd inspector had some prob in detecting hdd . When i tried to access the data in 20 Gb hdd the computer hung. Then i had to remove that hdd to continue normal operation

My query .. Is my harddisk dead? The software says i have used my hdd for 10k hours in 5 years. Is that all what i can use for a hdd.
The major problem i didnt back up data on the 160Gb hdd i have, so is there any way to back it up

 

[Mohit]

most probably ur hdd is dead.... try using it on another pc.

and u were really careless man ...how can u trust a 5 yr old 20 gb hdd with ur data ??????

 

[scarezebra]

As Mohit said....Most probably ur Hard disk is dead....But just check the IDE cables on ur Hard disk for any loose connections...Even check the power cables...

 

[andrew327]

Check ur hdd on some other machine !!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are a lot of information available on how to recover data from a dead hdd ..................
If u r a expert u'll get ur data back

 

[Quad Master]

My hdd speeds too dropped after i used a HDD monitoring software called HDD Health which is a S.M.A.R.T. monitoring software which monitors thresholds.

One thing that i have noticed with my PC is whenever i do something that monitors SMART status of HDD's my transfer rates drop to 3 ~ 10 MB/s this is not always but this

phenomenon occurs only after monitoring the SMART Status.

This is a strange thing thats happens.

More on my problem here