Thanks guys. I started getting a message Diskette Drive 0 seek failure. I searched around on the net, went into F2 and tried to disable floppy disks etc. but it changed nothing. Someone said it might be the arm?

Think the HDD is definitely dead. We've taken it out and it makes a noise when tipped, kind of like a cd starting up, no clicking or anything.

All photos backed up so there's nothing on there that I'm too worried about losing, although I'd rather not lose it if possible.

I did think about getting an enclosure to stick the hard drive in so I could try to access it from the laptop, but not sure it's worth it. We did have a look in "PCs-R-US" - utterly useless bunch there on a Sunday ("are you able to check this HDD for us?" His answer - "nah!" They didn't even know where these enclosures were in their own shop ) - but the enclosures were specific to the HDDs - SATU, etc.???

Rich, what is a Linux live cd? A recovery disk? Where do you get them from?

Stop press - a friend where Steve works has one of these enclosures and will have a look at the HDD this afternoon. At least I'll know for certain if it's definitely that.

They're basically an operating system on a cd dvd, or even usb stick. Used for various purposes including system recovery, as an installation media etc.

The quickest way to get one would be on the cover of Linux Format magazine from any supermarket. Any decent live cd will include some tools that could be used for system recovery. For a specialist recovery one, you'd need to download it & burn it to a cd.

That's actually a very good idea - why didn't I think of that

Linda, you can download one from here (on your laptop) http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download and then burn it to disk, and then insert into your PC and in F2 options make sure cd/dvd is set as the first boot disk. I would definitely give that a go. Once with the HD in, and if that doesn't work take the HD out and try again.

whats an enclosure?

Do you mean USB HD reader/dock?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welland-USB3...1-6&tag=vig-21

Thanks Azz.

Well, the outcome is that the HDD has officially had it! End of. At least I know anyway.

Thanks everyone for the advice.

cheers azz

what do they do?
what are they for?

You put a hard drive in them, then plug them into a usb port so an internal hard drive can be used as an external/portable drive.

but why would you take your hard drive out of your computer only to slot it into this docking station which you then USB back into your computer???

i dont geddit