You know how record players work, arm with a needle reaches out over a record and moves back and forth.

Same sort of deal with a hard drive, except a magnet rather than a needle is on the end of an arm that moves back and forth over a spinning metal disk with invisible grains of rust on it :).

From what you just said,, sounds like maybe that was your hard drive arm smacking the end of its reach .. which could go along with Operating system not found..

Hard drive maybe is failing.. Which makes a curiosity... Why did you have windows-reinstalled ?

I could barely get it to start up. It just wouldn't start. No clicking, but just would not boot up. I figured Windows had become corrupted in some way. But if the hard drive is shot, then no amount of re-installing will help. Wonder if that could have been detected prior to the re-install? I'm just pretty po'd that I spent all the money for a re-install just last month. Luckily I have all my data saved now, but I just don't want to get a new laptop right now!!

The reason I don't want to get a new computer is because I was about to buy a tablet and retire my laptop from its road duties. Seems like it was taking a beating since I am on the road a lot and back and forth to school with it. I was going to use the tablet for my Internet browsing and for the road now and the laptop as my home computer for word processing, etc. Phooey, this puts all my plans into question. Can I just get a new hard drive? But then, wondering if that will be worth it. The Windows re-install seemed to be worth it when I priced tablets, but now . . . . (I didn't have the technical acumen and time to do the Windows re-install myself,) It was 90 bucks for the re-install plus a memory stick for the data.

Years ago I took mine in when it started making a clicking sound. They said it was usually the HD failing. They checked it out and it was.

Well, when I first had the "operating system not found" there was no clicking. No sound at all. I just wish they had found this ahead of time, then I would have forgone the re-install and just gotten a new laptop. Or maybe a new hard drive. Wondering if that would be worth it. I like my laptop and really don't feel like getting another one. It's barely five years old!

I don't know how big your hard drive is .. 5 yrs ago, they could be big or small. Regular hard drives are not overly pricey 50 to 100 dollar range if not huge... but you would need a usb hard drive enclosure which can be had fairly cheap.. I think I paid like $15 for one from newegg.

Then you can just buy a new hard drive, clone th old one to it. Most new hard drives will have a cloning program you can download from the manufactures websire. Or there are free clone programs too.

Most laptop hard drives are pretty simple - remove a panel from the bottom... but I don't know Sony ways.

Spinner drive are getting kind of old fashioned for laptops. A 256 SSD drive maybe could be slight under $100 or super fast 256gb maybe $150. An Sdd drive will be an amazing difference in speed that might wow you if you're not used to them.

I just ordered a 128gb 10 yr warranted Samsung for my 3 yr old laptop.. about $112 delivered. It will take me maybe 30 minutes to install it and windows fresh. And 15 minutes of that is wait time.

Almost all major brand computers have a hard drive diagnostic that you can access by pressing specific function keys at startup. Tell me what you have or just google hard drive diagnostics, computer make

Ya know, the guy at the computer repair place suggested I buy an external hard drive, but I just didn't think I had the need for storage, I'm not a big video or photo gal. So I went with a 32G usb memory dohickey because it was a lot cheaper. (I can never come up with the correct name for those things! I used to call them "thumb drives" and folks just said "WHAT?"). So now I'm really wondering what to do--ditch the whole thing or spend another 100 bucks on a new hard drive. I spent 90 on the Windows re-install, thinking I could get another year or so out of the laptop. I'm not really savvy enough to install this thing by myself, plus I am right in the middle of moving cross country. I don't like the idea of just discarding my old laptop, but I also don't want to throw good money after bad.

So you're saying if I bought an external hard drive that it would clone the operating system on it's own, after I plugged it in, like with some kind of utility that comes with the drive?

Having been down this road once myself consider backing up anything that is important to you. My clicking lasted for only a couple days before total H/D failure. Fortunately I kept regular backups of important data.

Perhaps you might be luckier.

DA

Search this on Amazon... 68UP25EN-BRSU this is nicer than you actually need,, probably could use with your next tablet or other newer laptops for a storage drive in future... hard drive case for a 2.5 inch laptop drive.

down the page you will see usb 2.0 external hard drive cases for as little as $7 .. then you plug a new hard drive into it. Download something like Macrium or one of the other free clone softwares. Installed it on your computer and use clone program to transfer your computer hard drive or just partitions to the new hard drive.

Then swap the new hard drive into the computer. Put your old hard drive in the external case and use it for backup.or storage ---. but it might not be so trusty :)

You might search your computer model number on youtube for replace hard drive. maybe a video showing how to do it.. most are usually quite simple.

Thanks for the suggestions on getting a new hard drive! I might get the tablet first and then once I am finished moving, figure out what to do about the hard drive on my laptop. They are having a deal at Verizon on tablets and I am thinking about getting one to replace my old, old cell phone. Meanwhile it seems to be OK for now, holding my breath. I also need to try that utility Pkponder suggested, to see what's up with my hard drive. I'm not feeling too well right now so this all may have to wait until the holiday weekend is over and I'm feeling better. Thank you all so much for your help!