Lots of BSOD, lock ups, hard drive not being detected by bios, is it f

Lots of BSOD, lock ups, hard drive not being detected by bios, is it failing?

Let me start by saying my PC is custom built, most parts are only a year old.

The oldest parts are the harddrive (about 5 years) and the soundcard (about 7 years).

I have never had major problems until now (a year after building it).

It all started with a blue screen.
KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR
Reboot windows and it seems to start up fine, gets to the desktop and locks up.

Reboot windows and I get another blue screen.
BAD_SYSTEM_CONFIG_INFO

I Try to start windows from the last good configuration.
Error. Registry file failure. Cannot load hive file.

I try booting from the windows cd and running a chkdsk.
Harddrive starts making a buzzing sound.
It gets to step 3 of 5 and stops.
Failed to transfer logged messages. Status 50

Now the bios rarely even "sees" the drive.
When I can get it to boot and see it, any attempt at diagnostics and repairs produces errors, locks up, or fails.

Is this a bad harddrive? I would hate to spend the money on a new one only to find it is a bad mobo or virus.

How can I diagnose this? If it is a bad drive I would like to save what juice is left in it and try to recover a few files before it dies.

Most of the important data has been backed up but I would like to try and get a few game save files if I can.

But its not a disaster if the drive data is not recoverable.

Thanks for any help in advance.

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System Manufacturer/Model Number-Custom Built OS-Windows 7 Pro 64bit CPU-Intel Core i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Motherboard-ASUS Sabertooth X58 LGA 1366 Intel X58 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 AT Memory-Kingston HyperX T1 Series 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM D Graphics Card(s)-ASUS ENGTX560 TI DCII/2DI/1GD5 GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1 Sound Card-Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE 7.1 Monitor(s) Displays-Samsung SyncMaster P2350 Hard Drives-Seagate Barracuda SATA 500gig PSU-Rosewill BRONZE Series RBR1000-M 1000W Continuous@40°C, 80P

I would recommend downloading and burning the DOS version of SeaTools to a CD/DVD and using it to run the short and long tests with the SeaTools diagnostic utilities.

I did that, it recommended an important firmware update. I read the firmware update info which said it fixed a problem with some drives not being responsive and not being detected by the bios. So I upgraded the firmware. After that I always get a message saying the SMART has tripped and I ran short and long tests from the Seatools and found a handfull of bad sectors and it failed to rapair any of them.

I just ordered a SATAIII 6g/s SSD. Hopefuly that will last a bit longer than the drives I've had in the past. I am going to attempt to install windows on the new drive and see if I am able to get any data off the old one.

Thanks!

I am disappointed that I may have lost some images/videos of the kids but I am pretty excited to be getting a new super fast ssd. I have learned my lesson and will set up a monthy backup onto my external network drive. Lesson to us all , back-up, back-up, back-up !

Backups are always a good idea. If you have not yet trashed the drive, I may be able to help you salvage some of the data. Let me know. Best of luck with the SSD!