Should I replace my HDD?
 

I was told that, as a componet with moving parts, the HDD and CD/DVD drivers have finite life-spans and will eventually break down. If this is true, when is a good time to replace it? My HDD and CD driver are the oldest things in my computer (though I have DVD driver now). I got a 320 GB HDD and was gonna use it as a back up, but wondering if its time I just toss the old one

Well that would depend how much money you have, and how old it is. Hard drives, huge ones, are pretty damn cheap these days. So are external hard drives, which are great backup and mobile solutions in one.

It couldn't hurt?

Don't toss it.

keep all your files backed up, but just keep using what you have. Don't pre-emptively decide something is garbage, because someone told you "Oh this thing only lasts like 3 years then it SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTS." I've had Western Digitals' that are STILL running fine with no errors, and one of them is about 8 years old now.

Summary: Do not throw it out, that would be stupid.

Yeah, just keep a good backup and update it regularly, and you should have no need to throw out your HDD. And if it does go splat, then you have a backup and can just recover from there.

Actually if it's 320GB it must be a similar age to mine, which is running okay after about 6 years. But, I don't particularly trust it, and keep all its data on two separate HDDs.

There are usually signs its gonna go anyways. If you haven't been hearing any wierd sounds coming from it when it reads/writes, it'll probably be fine for a while longer.

But yeah, just keep a backup and you'll be a-okay.

Just make it a point to buy a high-quality HDD, and never worry about it again. My pair of 74Gb Western Digital Raptor drives have been running the length of their 5-year warranty without a format, on a RAID-0, and no data errors atrributed to them. The past six months, they have been running 24-7, downloading/uploading torrents and converting video, which are HDD-heavy operations.

Unless there are signs of failure (Bad sectors, data loss, the "click of death") don't waste a working component. Hard drives either give you plenty of warning or none at all, and in the latter case it can happen at any time to any drive.

In short, don't worry about it.

My Seagate 3 gigabyte hard drive still works fine after just over 10 years.

well every so often I do get this odd, popping/snapping sound. No clue what it is though

When you hear the click of death, you will know what it is. You will then immediately lose access to all of your data. Here is an example.

The hard drive will occasionally make sounds which sound weird, but they're not necessarily a harbinger of doom. If you're at all worried, though, back up any important documents and use it as a slush drive, ie install games on it.