Hi:
Are you getting in put output errors?
Does your machine boot to a black screen with white letters saying "Kernel panic not syncing attempted to kill init"?
When my HDD went south these were the kind of errors that I was getting.
Code:
[ 28.561344] ata1: irq_stat 0x0c000000, interface fatal error
[ 28.561347] ata1: SError: { RecovData UnrecovData Proto HostInt 10B8B BadCRC }
[ 28.561350] ata1: hard resetting link
[ 29.051044] ata1: softreset failed (device not ready)
[ 29.051048] ata1: applying PMP SRST workaround and retrying
[ 29.222849] ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
[ 29.222866] ata1: EH complete
[ 29.222889] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Unhandled error code
[ 29.222892] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda]
[ 29.222893] Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[ 29.222895] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] CDB:
[ 29.222897] Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 77 00 00 08 00
[ 29.222905] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 119
[ 29.222908] Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 28
[ 29.222911] Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 29
[ 29.222913] Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 30
[ 29.222915] Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 31
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 119
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 121
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 123
Run the dmesg command and post the output in code tags and someone can read through it to tell you what is going on.
