"Hard Drive Failure" - message advice?

DPR_

Reputable
Oct 1, 2015
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missing-operating-system.png


Our family PC was on and running today, but when I left for a minute and came back; it was at a pure black screen that simply said "Hard Drive Failure" (similar to above, substituting my message in quotes). When I tried to reboot, it got stuck at the "Dell" startup screen, and wouldn't boot into the HDD from BIOS; although it did recognize it.
Powered it off, left it for an hour; and it booted up. However, it did hit a "Windows Error Recovery" screen, and has been for a while now upon a boot up here and there. The computer is three years old.
Should I ignore it, or replace it (the HDD) asap? My guts say better safe than sorry, but extra input couldn't hurt anyway.
 
Back up anything important right away. A failing hard drive will sometimes show a few more signs of life before giving out entirely; think of it as a golden opportunity to save anything you might need. Typically you'd expect a drive to last about twice what you got out of it, but it's really luck of the draw.