I'm an antique tech at this point, being 10 years into retirement, but
here is what I found in the past...

If the drive gives that message more than once you might as well buy a
new one and transfer the data over to the new one. Hopefully you will
still be able to access everything. What that will do to Win7 I do not
know. I bought XP and that's where I'm staying for occasional use.
After it's end of life in 2014 I will try not to use any Windows.

The conventional wisdom is that a hard drive should last about 5 years
but I've had them go in two - just off warranty. Repair? You must be
joking! There are clean room shops that will take a drive apart, copy
every byte and fix the bad ones, put it on a brand new drive and
charge you several thousand dollars. Not an economically sound choice
for most of us.

Used to be you could get a good overview of your Hard Drive's
condition by running scandisk and looking at the big red "B" for bad
blocks markers on the lo-res graphical picture of the drive. I don't
think that's available any more but possibly some utilities (Norton?)
may provide it. What is observed is that IF the problem is hardware (a
part of the surface has flaked off) and it's not on a critical area
like the boot sector, THEN it is often possible to continue to use the
drive, possibly for years. However, once they start to go it is just a
matter of time, possibly years but maybe hours, until the problem
spreads and you definitely do lose significant amounts of data - or it
just won't boot up.

If it is a software issue (a bit that was inverted by that one in a
trillion O/S mistake) then standard tools like fsck may fix it, or at
least make the drive usable. I'm sure you are aware that every hard
drive is shipped from the factory with a few bad sectors but there are
spare sectors that are mapped onto that location to make it appear
perfect. The same thing happens when fsck, scandisk etc are run: they
detect the unrecoverable sector/block and map in one of the spares so
the problem appears to go away. It does slow down disk access and
eventually all the spare sectors are used up but hopefully things are
problem free for that desired 5 years.

The bottom line is that it is far better (and cheaper) to replace the
drive as soon as there is any sign of trouble. That's why I replace my
drives with new ones every few years. It's my way of backing up, and,
no, it isn't foolproof but I haven't lost anything through hardware
failure for a long time. Through stupidity, yes, fairly often!

I've used 15-year-old hard drives and never had a problem -- other than the
fact that I have individual files larger than a 15-year-old hard drive. For $10,
I can buy a larger flash drive.

All HD's fail - some will go on for years and years, others will hit
the dirt early on. Just a factor in their mechanical nature !! The
only salving grace is if it's still within warranty but that doesn't
cover data, only the bare drive.

To answer your point:

1) Repair might be possible but is only a stop gap to get the OS
loading again for backup purposes. Once that warning is given you have
an indeterminate time before total failure.

2) You can install from scratch onto a new HD in the same hardware
without any issue, apart from the time it takes of course :-) If you
do get an activation prompt it'll more than likely go through the
automatic system without a hiccup.

The easier method is to fit the new HD whilst the old one is still
functional and clone the contents to the new one using a program like
Acronis True Image, which has a 30 day free trial plus HD makers
Seagate and Western Digital have a free one for download on their wen
sites that work with their drives only. If it's a laptop then you'll
need to fit the old HD into a USB caddy to connect it for the cloning
process.

3) Usually when you start up the first time you'll be nagged into
making recovery DVD's but I've found over the years that when a user
gets to the point of needing them they've gone bad and don't work :-(

Regarding Acronis above, this can make an image of the entire HD onto
a backup drive that can be used to restore back onto the same drive or
a new one.

R> I rebooted today and got a warning from BIOS that I am facing imminent
R> hard drive failure.

I can only familiar with XT. I had netbook and system board went south out
of warranty. At a local PC shop I bought pieces to assemble a desktop a
year ago, they ask to see my hologram Windows S/N sticker. After varifying
I had one he make a copy of the XT CD. Installing on the new desktop, and
new HD, the CD wanted, demanded, I enter the 5 by 5 S/N. With that it was
happy and continued installing XT. I think you have 30 days to register
each install with MS.

I don't know the terms of Win 7, check with a local HD supplier, tell them
your predicament. They should be able to supply you a CD, or copy onto a CD
you supply, Win 7. Have the agree to provide you a copy of Win 7 if you buy
an HD from them. I hope you have the Win 7 sticker with the S/N readable.

I have bought 2 netbooks, both have the S/N sticker, and a friend gave me
his old XT, it also has the sticker.

I'm curious about Win 7. Does anyone know what the MS policy on Win 7 and
the sticker/license? Is it basically the same as XT?

Presume you mean 'XP' as in Windows XP, but yes the licence policy is
exactly the same - one installation per licence and tied to the
hardware it's first install on.

We all have hardware failures and in the case of a new motherboard
I've not had problems activating but it might mean talking to an
advisor to get it sorted, use the automated freephone system at first
and if it refuses to activate you'll get the option to speak to an
advisor where you can explain the situation :-)

PS: A refusal by an advisor is final and there's no appeal process,
the key is revoked permanently - so be nice to them, they have the
finger on the 'reject' button

MB> I'm curious about Win 7. Does anyone know what the MS policy on
MB> Win 7 and the sticker/license? Is it basically the same as XT?

Note to self: Next time you see a used PC cheap with the Win 7 s/n sticker
intact and readable, this could be a good buy of Win 7 OS.

Not that I necessarily want it but in 2014 XP will no longer work and/or
supported. Just in case. Here is hoping I won't need any MS software,
including their OS, by then.

Oh, on my reference to XT, shows how long I've been around.

I should have said that it was a desktop PC and not a laptop.

Backing up is just about complete. I will then boot into W7 and try making
recovery disks. There is nothing on W7 so I do not need to do a restore. I
have everything important on my home partition which is backed up three
times now. Some files are backed up on an external drive. Some are backed
up using Deja Dup, but it is encrypted so not much use until I need to
restore from it. It was my insurance if things went quickly. Now my entire
home and Windows userspace is backed up on another external drive.

I have bought another drive to replace the dying Seagate. I will try
cloning first. If that does not work then I will try re-installing from
disks and then copying userspace back from my backups. It takes a long time
to copy tens of thousands of files. :(

I may be on my tablet for some time and will let you know how it turns out.

I don't think I can help you with the hard drive. When I have had hd
errors I replaced them except once where a formatting of the hd was
enough, bad sectors I guess. But a hd can fail in many ways.

As for Windows 7 you can download an iso here and use your licence code.
I did that and it worked.

do you have a laptop or a desktop? Many of the laptops nowadays
come with Windows pre-installed and do not contain a rescue or recovery
disk to re-install everything. Instead, they contain, usually a
"hidden" partition on the hard drive for the purpose of recovery. It
should be in your manual about that, but if not you could probably
Google it by putting the model number in quotes ("_). Usually, you have
to press a certain key or combination of keystrokes to make the recovery
disk function come up. But BACKUP everything FIRST that you need to save.

Also, I believe the answer is YES about creating one or more DVDs for
most systems in order to create and make your own back-up or recovery
disks to reinstall Windows 7. I certainly agree with you about not
losing it, since you paid for it and you never know when you might need
it. (For example, I could not get Quicken to install under my Virtual
Windows 7 Pro running under Ubuntu). That should also be in your
manual and in your help files that you can click on to get information,
I would think.

The other thing - why not try to use a USB external hard drive and back
up everything you need to back up on that, Dropbox online, or whatever
works for you for now to be sure you don't lose anything before you
start your recovery?

Aw finally something I can comment on. I recently had the same problem
with my 1tb. Funny thing is it also is a Seagate. Anyway I bought a new
drive and used the freeware that I have linked and it worked flawlessly.

when my drives screw up I scrap them and take out the magnets "very
powerful" and use the discs as bird scarers

From what my friends tell me, 7 has a built-in utility to do a disk
image. This would allow you to "take a snapshot" of everything
including all the MS crap like activation, etc. You make this image
and store it on an external drive or what ever and when you get the
new drive, restore the image.