So my laptop (bought Aug 2005) crapped out on me. It won't boot up in safe mode or in regular mode. A strange clicking sound emanates from within, presumably from the hard drive.

It happened this morning. I tried moving some files from a .zip into a regular folder and came up with an error. It said I have "not enough disk space", even though I have about 11gb of free space on my HD.

Is it worth it to try and reformat, or to take it to a repair shop, or is it safe to say that my computer is toast?

The harddrive is probably gone. Luckily, they are easy to replace and not that expensive. I'd take it to the shop and get it replaced, assuming you didn't notice any other problems before.

So I was mind-numbling bored today and decided to reformat anyways just in case, and it worked!!!! :D

Id back up your data ASAP and get a replacement drive just in case. Clicking and HD's are a bad combination.

Well I have pretty much all the important stuff backed up on a thumb drive and/or gmail, and the clicking stopped so thats nice!

I do imagine this laptop is on its last few laps around the track... I just hope it holds out until grad school so I can just buy one then.

Luckly, the only time I had to reformat my HD was when I had to reinstall Windows XP due to spyware/malware issues.

I melted my old laptop's harddrive. I would seriously recommend you get the harddrive replaced, 50.