Probable hard drive failure

I won't utter the string of expletives that are running through my mind right now, but pretty much, my hard drive is showing all the signs of being very very dead. So I'm annoyed. VERY. I do however, have a live install of ubuntu which allows me to continue to use my computer, but it's not perfect, and I'm STILL ANNOYED.

I do rather need to sort it out, but at least after the minor death a few days ago I saved all the irreplaceable files. I think.

So 1. I might be slightly less active (I can't be active unless I've got my keys on me, pretty much)
and 2. Any advice? I do have some old IDE drives I can get my hands on and use if I find a cable, but beyond that?

It's called get a new HD and reload it.

I had that happen with an NT system. Unfortunately, most OSs aren't available on disc format so that you can reload it on a new HD.

What sort of signs are there? Maybe it's something that can be troubleshot? One can always hope x)

The signs of, last night, grub pulling "no such partition" on any attempted boot, disk utility on a live boot failing to recognise any of the partitions, this morning when it was readable + I was backing up, many folders being unopenable and presumably corrupted, the partition table being corrupted to the point that I could format it "normally", and only formatted it when, to my surprise, after wiggling the cable around a bit as a test for a loose connection, I reloaded to a blanked hard drive (not complaining.... )

Now formatted properly, after the partition table was nuked, and reinstalling as I type...

Could have done a CHKDSK to check if it was salvageable! Remember this next time.

I pretty much did - not all of the partitions were windows-safe ones, nor was it even getting so far as the bootloader, it was bottoming out in an attempt at loading it.

I did manage to salvage most, the only thing that I lost was my IRC logs, but I can deal with that.