Hard Drive Crashed, still usable?

[Tulo2low]

I had a hard drive crash in my laptop. I was able to put it into my desktop and recover the data. My question is, should I format the drive and put it back in the laptop? If it works, is another crash inevitable?

 

[ss202sl]

You could run some HDD diagnostics (from the HDD manufacturer) and see what that shows. This might help determine if the HDD is failing.

 

[Chicano]

The only way to know is to scan the Hard Drive with a HD application... I'd suggest you use Hard Disk Sentinel... it should give you an estimated remaining lifetime in days and a HD Health in percentage.
If the Health graphic shows a low percentage (say 20%), you may still be able to use it but don't trust it with important data... If the result is above 50% it should work without issues for some time to come. Do regular scans to see if the health % stays or comes down.

http://www.hdsentinel.com/