Noisy laptop CPU fan + more

[expmsct]

So a family member's HDD died last week and I replaced it yesterday. The whole thing was running smoothly as I installed Windows and set everything up, and was fine the next day before going haywire tonight. It sounds like a blender and makes things slow to a crawl; it takes too long to shut down and boot back up.

There were similar noises shortly before the previous HDD failed. I'm pretty sure it's coming from the top left corner, which is where the CPU fan is located. I've watched a couple videos on Youtube, and replacing the fan and/or motherboard on this machine (Dell Inspiron 1525) requires literally taking the whole thing apart, something I've never done. I have little experience with laptops and am not even sure they're worth fixing in most cases. Is the fan indeed the culprit, and can this thing be salvaged? Thanks in advance.

 

[xsamdagreatx]

A bad HDD would make things slow and would definitely make shutting down the machine slow too. the noise in the other hand that is not HDD like. a bad HDD would make a ticking kind of noise. if the noise is coming from the heat sink. try to clean it up and hope it is just a matter of dust trapped in there. ( it sounds more to me that the HDD you bought has some issues too)