Hard Drive Dying or other issue?

[Daddy2007]

I'll try to make this as thorough as possible.
My folks have a Dell Inspiron 531s with the low profile case. It has been having issues of the cpu fan running loud for no reason. Then it would shut down unexpectedly, usually when someone was playing a game or watching a web video. It finally wouldn't reboot. I looked at it and it was showing a Hard Drive error. I coaxed it into booting up and it seemed alright. But the Hard Drive temperature was way too high. It was hot to the touch and had a reading of 52 degrees Celsius. So I concluded that the HD was overheating and the system was shutting down.
Okay. Is it the hard drive, or possibly poor air circulation through the case? I have never been impressed with low profile pc cases. The side 80mm case fan doesn't seem to be blowing very well. I compared it to the airflow through my pc's case fan.
I have brought the hard drive over to my house and hooked it up to my pc. It would not boot all the way, even after running Startup Repair. BUT it never did heat up like it did in its own case. I had it running for a hour or so. Unfortunately I don't have a usb/sata adapter so I can hook the drive up and go through it looking for problems, plus back-up all important files.
So since it did not over heat while I was running it, could it be something else in the pc that is causing the problem?

 

[its snoodles]

it may be a little bit of both the heat in the computer may have cause the hard drive to fail. i have a question what brand is it? i fixed a computer a while back that had a bad hard drive wouldnt do anything just froze at the boot all i could do was get into the bios.

 

[Daddy2007]

It is a 320 GB Seagate.

It is strange because it ran fine when connected to my pc. I do believe the Hard Drive definitely has errors because of the multiple times the pc would just shut off. I would like for the issue to be either the mobo or psu. The 80mm case fan didn't seem to be putting out much air either.

 

[Atomic Rooster]

You can download a utility from Seagate called SeaTools. It will diagnose your drive and tell you of any problems.

 

[madanchi]

It has been having issues of the cpu fan running loud for no reason. Then it would shut down unexpectedly, usually when someone was playing a game or watching a web video.

tbh, that part alone sounds like your thermal paste needs replacing

 

[Daddy2007]

Well, I'm 95% sure it is the Hard Drive. I hooked it back up and it has been running fine, cool, etc. But it wouldn't boot. Kept saying it couldn't find the hard drive. Start up Repair wouldn't function right either.I also ran SFC and it said it found errors, but that is as far as I got with it. It did boot to Windows once. I had it running in the Windows environment for a hour or so. Unfortunately this Pc didn't come with a recovery disk. So I found and downloaded the .iso to create a Vista recovery disk.
So my next plan of action is to try and backup all important personal files of the HD then run the Recovery disk.
I'm also going to buy a new 80mm fan, to see if it will run faster than the current fan.
I'm still having hope that the HD is alright because it is functioning without heating up. Just seems to have some System files that are corrupt. I think that might have happened from the sudden system crashes.
I would like to replace the Low profile case with a better case, and replace the puny 230 Watt PSU too.