Satellite A40: HDD no longer works

I have a Toshiba Satellite A40 with a 40GB hard drive which was supplied as standard.
I have had absolutely no problems with it since buying it... until now.
On the 19th of September I left my laptop on (doing nothing) for a while as I had to rush off. I returned to the 'blue screen of death' which said I had a hardware failure and Windows had to shut down. It was late so I turned the laptop off and left it until the morning.
The following morning I started the laptop up. It made an awful rattling noise that it has never made before. It loaded windows extremely slowly, logged me in, and then crashed to the blue screen.
When I listened to the noise I thought it was the fan, which is blocked would cause the laptop to overheat and shutdown. So I checked the fan for obstructions and dust, and then cleaned some dust out of the heatsink at the back. I turned the laptop on and the noise came back.
After listening to the noise more closely I heard it wasn't coming from the fan, but from the compartment just in front of it - the hard drive. From then on when I started the computer I got the Toshiba POST screen and then it wouldn't boot. I booted it from the Recovery CD to re-format the HD but whenever it tries to read the HD to start re-formatting it crashes. And now, whenever I turn it on I get the message 'Insert System Disc'.
I have had this problem before with another computer and simply re-installed windows, but, I've never had such a loud and awful noise from the HD. I'm going to try to re-install windows later today but wanted to know if anyone else has had a similar problem and if it would be wise to replace the HD altogether. Preferabbly I want to re-install Windows and recover the lost files which unfortuently weren't backed up as I only typed them up that very same day.
Any comments or ideas would be very helpful.
Thanks.

Hi
For me the case is very clear. According to you description it sounds like a HDD head crash. The sound is coming from inside of the HDD.
Furthermore the message 'Insert System Disc' appears because the BIOS cannot find the HDD or the OS.
Well, unfortunately, in my opinion there is not much to do. I think only the HDD replacement will solve this issue and let you to use the notebook again.
Good luck

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Please wait while information is being collected...
100% (collecting Local Disk information)
Refresh screen
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