My hard drive just went the way of my last auto-engine today... overheating crash. Run to the Hills.

Has anyone ever had this problem before? My HDD has been hanging a lot lately, and today it hung 3 times in 5 minutes while playing music. That's all. Just mp3 files and my computer hung so bad I could hear the HD humming, so I touch the bottom of the laptop, where its attached. The things hotter than my cpu and gpu combined. My first thought is "Shit! Turn off computer, turn upside down, and open a window!" So I try to turn her off ----------------- then I hold down the power button.

BEFORE! I didn't change a thing. My last upgrade was almost 6 months ago, and it was a RAM chip. If there were problems with that RAM chip, my hard-drive wouldn't be acting so f***ing wierd.

NOW! I can't boot the partition I was using at the time, it goes to bare-minimum boot, but I can still use the other partition, and access (some of) the files on the part. that crashed.

My other partition isn't behaving right anymore, either. Now sudo no longer works, because the setuid no longer functions, but I can still edit some root-owned stuff I shouldn't be allowed to touch just with vi.

I think I need a new HDD - agree, or disagree? I don't wanna shell out THE REST OF MY MONEY* without knowing for sure this is the problem.

Thanks in advance, guys. Hopefully I'll learn enough that I can help YOU for once ^_^

*(no joke, man, I'd probly have to take out a loan to get a good hard-drive. I can't get a job that pays well enough for me to go to a university and deal with this kind of sh**, not in MI at age 19, man.)