HDD Crash

So, my hard drive starts making these repeating beeping and clicking noises while I was on computer, I freak and turn off the computer and reboot and wouldn't you know it, my computer wouldn't boot (and making the same sounds). After I remove the hard drive (it's a secondary drive), it boots normally. Anybody know if there is anyway I can run some sort of diagnostic progams on it? Obviously, plugging it back into the computer gave the same results. Would making a boot disk work and how?

BTW, this happend after I tried to burn a data DVD, I heard this really heats up the HDD but it's fairly new (5 months old dammit!).

Make and model of hdd?

Simply take an axe to the misbehaving drive, get a new one and restore from backup.

Maxtor DiamonMax Plus
Ultra ATA/133
7200 rpm
200gb
internal

Ahaha - a Maxtor! Colour me completely unsurprised!

Since the drive is causing boot problems, it sounds more like a problem with the drive electronics than physical damage. Does the drive show up properly in BIOS (ie. is it being autodetected correctly, with the correct drive geometry?). If not, try the drive in a different computer to make sure it's not your motherboard throwing a fit. If you do narrow it down to it being the drive it's a fairly good chance the logic board is shot. To get the drive working again you can buy an identical model drive and swap the boards over and get your data back (of course, this fucks the new drive).

I can't seem to get to the BIOS screen, pressing F10 does nothing and the computer hangs during the boot. Is there a boot disk I can make to bypass the HDD from creating the boot problems in the first place? I'd try putting the HDD in another computer but my spare computer won't be available until 2 weeks later.

Damn, it looks like I'm out of another $120 either way, that creepy-ass dude on the front box should of gave it away that I was buying an inferior product...

Well, there's http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ for a bootable CD of useful utils, or http://www.knoppix.org/ for a bootable Linux CD. But if you can't get into BIOS there's something seriously wrong with your system here. Can you still get into BIOS with the dodgy drive unplugged? If so, then it looks very likely that the drive electronics are shot and are causing all kinds of havoc with the rest of the computer. If not, then your motherboard is shot (possibly in the BIOS, possibly in the IDE controller). If it's the former case, replace the drive (after confirming its non-functionality on another PC), if it's the latter, try clearing the CMOS and/or reflashing the BIOS (I've had non-booting machines before that have been fixed by simply removing and reseating the BIOS EPROM too).

Yup, it seems that everything works fine with the HDD removed, and the computer boots up normally too. Until I can try the faulty HDD on another computer, it probably is the HDD electronics thats causing all the problems. Thanks anyways for the help, I hope this kind of stuff is covered in their warrenty...