
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.