hard disk failure ?

Sign that your H.D. is dying: TOO noisy

Special way to make it last longer: Not really, they last an average of 10-15 years (IDE H.D.s)

Recover lost data: Maybe. If it's not completely dead, you can buy a hard drive enclosure or just add it to another PC as a slave drive and you can recover your files.

From what I have seen in systems over the years, the hard drive should last a minimum of 5 years when properly cared for. After that it si 50/50 even though they have been doing better with the models of the past 5 or 6 years. Signs of failure are problems opening files, funny buzzing noises on occassion, or a load whine at startup. You should turn off the system if not needed for several hours. It will decrease wear and tear as well as heat buildup. You can even manage disk power through the power settings in Control Panel. I have mine set to spin down after a few minutes if I get busy and don'r use the system. Should keep all vents clean and inside dust build up minimized. Data recovery is very expensive for a failed drive. It is a lot easier to do a file dump to a CD or DVD on a set schedule. It can even be scheduled as a task when the machine is not in use.

Normally when your hard drive is about to fail you will notice it acts funny when you boot up. sometimes it freezes or the screen just goes black.

When you start getting the blue screen of death when trying to boot up you may get 1 to 2 more tries then your drive is going to crap out.

If you think that their is even a chance of your drive crashing then I would go ahead and backup everything you need to save on removable media such as a disk or a flash drive.

You really can't prolong the life of a hard drive. They all have there limits or life expectancy. I would tell you to not hold in the reset button until your computer shuts down. There can cause the arms that read the disc platters to fault out and weaken.

since hard drives are pretty cheap now , i would invest in a 2nd hard drive ( almost mandatory in my opinion ) and create a ghost image of the C drive on to it . this way if the C drive would ever crash you can image the system back in a matter of minutes rather then several hours reinstalling windows / updates / drives and all

prevent.... implement raid 5 where you will have at least 3 hard drives and if one failes your data will still be good.