Technology Forum

Hello, I have a 5 year old HP Pavilion 533w with windows xp Pro SP2 and Intel Celeron 2.00 @ 1.99 GHz and 759mb of RAM.Just recently (within the past 2 weeks) my hard drive has been making click noises at times. I noticed for now it only seems to make the noise when its doing work (trying to load up a program, Im opening folders with a bunch of pictures, or files). Usually the click is only one time and then its gone.. but just a few hours ago.. I was trying to open up some folders and the click noise came back but it didnt go away after the first time, it kept doing the click noise until the computer restarted.I've read around and it could mean my HD is failing.. but i just wanted to see what others thought.. I have enabled the check disk error thing window has but i have to restart my computer.. I'd prefer to first back up the most important things on this computer and then restart. Im wondering, is this mostly likely what the reason is? My HD failing?Also.. any idea of how much time i have.. since it seems like the HD only does click noises when i try to load something that stresses the computer.. and not really for any other reason.Thanks.