Do I need a new harddrive

[neveragain20]

When I turn my Dell Inspiron 1764 laptop on I get the following message:

SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disc 0: WDC WD3200BETV-75ZCT2-(S1)

WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent

after i press F1 to continue,
I get operating system not found

I have tried to reinstall windows 7 but once the installation disc in put it I have no available drives or partitions to down load it to.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

neveragain2o,
Welcome to SF. I have a older Gateway lappy and I upgraded from a 80 gb to a 320 gb WD drive and ever since I've to date gone through 4 of them and when they go they do what you're describing. I hate to say it unless you have a external drive bay or a adapter to test on another system it does sound like the drive is toast. If you have important data on the drive that's hopefully backed up then it's not the end of the world. If the data isn't backed up and it's very important then you may have to take it to a specialist to retrieve the data and it's way expensive. I hope you can test this drive in an external bay first.
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