Hdd hangs up

[cyrux]

I have two hdds installed on my system, both working in PATA. The first which is set of secondary master is a WD 160 Gb and the second on is a seagate 20Gb which i purchased 5 years back.
I have a software called hdd inspector which monitors the tempearture of hdds and other details too. Since few days when ever i started up my system the hdd inspector gave me a message that the 20GB harddisk has reached its lower threshold level and showed up the SMART details. I ignored this message but 2 days back when i switched on the system it failed to boot in XP.On the next restart it fialed to boot and the mother board gave beeps.At the third restart i coud get in XP but hdd inspector had some prob in detecting hdd . When i tried to access the data in 20 Gb hdd the computer hung. Then i had to remove that hdd to continue normal operation

My query .. Is my harddisk dead? The software says i have used my hdd for 10k hours in 5 years. Is that all what i can use for a hdd.
The major problem i didnt back up data on the 160Gb hdd i have, so is there any way to back it up

[digiFriend]

your hard disk is nearly deadth.if you booth from other harddisk and if your old hardisk is detected in secondary(by chance) ,backup as muck data as you can in that sesion.
think to remember is whenever harddisk show slightest problem, backup data in that session only without experiment furture. next time it might not boot up or get detected.
generally hardisk relability life is 3 years only ,after that you show back up data frequently. use norton ghost for backing whole partition . for data only using xp backup is more than enough.