Do I need to replace my hard drive?

I have a Lenovo y500 that is running windows 8. Whenever I boot it up, it takes a while then says there's something wrong with the drive. Then it says "preparing automatic repair" for a while and eventually goes to a blue screen, from which I'm unable to boot up windows. It used to give me that option, but it never worked anyway. Before this started happening, my hard disk usage was locked at 100% for some reason I could never figure out the the laptop was running unreasonably slow. Last year my laptop's hard drive gave out and I had to have it replaced. This is acting like a different problem but I wonder if it might have the same solution.

Added (1). I tried resetting the laptop to factory and reinstalling windows. It worked for a little while, but when I tried to reboot my laptop, it went back to the same old stuff and continues to not be able to boot up.

ryan

If the hard drive is still functioning but appears to be in "trouble" you can either replace it, or prepare to replace it.
http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/internal-hard-drive/#f=3&i=25,24&sort=a10&page=1&S=150000,1000000
It is Windows that can be expensive. I do not know what size (Gigabytes - they are all 2.5" until recently) you have, but the general process is clone an existing drive onto a new one and swap. You use a SATA-USB enclosure at $6 to $15
It could be registry or software related, so if you can risk losing all the software on it you can make a driver disk and get the product key or make a recovery disk of some sort and wait for it to die.
Lenovo gives you a maintenance manual
http://download.lenovo.com/...nglish.pdf
The HDD removal is not a big job.
Depending on how much data is on the HDD INCLUDING WINDOWS AND All HIDDEN, you can get an SSD. You might delete backup files and only keep one recovery to keep the space down.
Just a potential as the prices came down.

Andy L

It sounds like a software issue. Before buying a new drive I would re-format and re-load your current one.

Jenny

This can happen if the HDD is starting to fail and developing a lot of bad sectors. Before you search for a software problem make sure the hardware is working properly. Look for the HDD manufacturer testing tool and run the scans it offers. If it fails you'll need to replace it. If it passes the problem might be software related. Hope that helps.

Techpumpkin_WD