Drives fail in any one of a host of ways - yes, yours needs to be replaced.

Replace the hard drive.  You need a new, 2.5" 9.5 mm SATA notebook drive.

Hard drive supplies are tight now due to WD and Toshiba directly suspending production at major sites in Thailand due to flooding - and the other major manufacturer, Seagate, having problems due to other component makers in Thailand having shut down production - so drive prices are doing something they rarely do - they're rising.

thanks for your help.

Thanks for your reply. Do I actually have to buy a brand new hard drive? Does this mean my current one is crashed/broken? Hoew does it happen?