Impending Hard Drive Crash

A few weeks ago, I noticed that the hard drive on the computer at home was making this peculiar ticking sound. Knowing that no one had planted a bomb, I began doing some research. A google search of 'ticking hard drive' returned millions of hits all saying basically the same thing: the hard drive is on it's last leg and will fail. Not 'probably fail', not 'might fail'... WILL fail, as in "I'm surprised it hasn't already" failed. Great. I backed my hard drive up to my external portable one. Soon the PC started randomly locking up and a couple weeks ago started taking at LEAST 15 minutes to boot up and log onto the network. Not wanting to shell out $$$ for a new computer and it otherwise being a good machine (the amount of memory it can have has been maxed out!), I decided I would try and replace the hard drive. Again, I backed up my hard drive.

Thankfully, Dell keeps track of the PCs it builds and what parts are in them. After I put in my Service Tag ID on the Dell site, it told me what hard drives were compatible. I ordered a 500GB hard drive from Western Digital for $65.99 (no tax, no shipping!) This is much more space than I'll ever need, but the smallest drive was 250GB and has less RAM.

After researching what this process was going to entail, I found bits and pieces of what to expect from different articles from Dell, Microsoft and others. No comprehensive "Here is how it's done" instructions. Great. This should be FUN! So I pieced together what I thought the process was going to be, did one last back up, replaced the hard drive, plugged it back in, held my breath and poked the power button. From there I:

-Entered the computer setup upon first boot to make sure the drive was identified by the computer (it was - Woo Hoo!!)
-Configured the PC to boot from the CD-ROM drive so XP could begin installing right away
-Decided not to partition the drive. If I need to later, I can
-Formatted the new hard drive
-Reinstalled Windows XP from the original disk that came with the PC
-Reinstalled the Wireless card software so I could get on the internet
-Updated Windows XP to the most current service pack including updates
-Reinstalled the drivers I needed from the disks that came with the PC
-Reinstalled Microsoft Office programs
-Went to bed

Tonight I hope to get my MS Outlook email and the .PST file back on the PC so I'll have access to all my old email, calendar and contacts in addition to other programs from the back up. This has been MUCH less scary than I figured it would be, but I'm not done. And thankfully, we have the laptop I can do some research on in case things go really wrong! Thanks to the new hard drive (and no other programs being loaded), it takes about 30 seconds to boot up and get on the internet. Much improved over 15 minutes!!