M17x Win7 Load Failure

If you someone could please give me some advice on this I would greatly appreciate it. This is my first post so I apologize in advance for any faux pas I may commit.

SPECS: Alienware M17x with: QX9300; 2 500GB HDD in RAID 0; GTX 260M SLI; 8GB RAM; more that I need it to boot to remember...

3 Weeks ago I had a nvRaid driver failure, which caused me to have to do a full Respawn with backup. Everything was a major hassle but eventually got everything back to normal (except for reinstalling Steam games). I successfully restored several Origin games (Fifa14, Crysis 2) and some Steam games (Shogun 2, Borderlands 2, & Rome 2) and played all of them with no issues. However, when I finished validating the install for Skyrim, the system began "thinking," stuttering, then crashed. Now, when I get to the Windows loading screen, I can hear a clicking, rustling sound, followed by a very faint chirping or beeping sound (I don't think it is a system beep). Is this a failed/failing Hard drive? I have received HAL errors from windows edit boot menu also.
In closing, I am very sad that I have such an expensive paperweight right now, but hopefully there is someone in here that has more experience than I do.

Thank you very much for your help and thoughts.

 

Sadly that could be a dying hard drive my brothers HP did the same thing in that time we played minecraft so we called it the silverfish cause it sounds like one but that drive died months later and we had to make the slave master

 

Thank you for the response. I hope that is not the case, but seems too obvious for it to be something different. This may be the catalyst that finally spurs me to build a new one. Oh well. I will try to repair Windows with a boot disk since nothing else is working at all, then see where that lands me. Thanks again!

 

It may be that, does the PSA show any errors or is it just the sound?

 

I was finally able to run a Windows setup diagnostic; the result was a failed hard drive, flashing warnings and beeping melodies (HDD 1 has allowed me to reinstall Win after I removed HDD 0, so I presume 0 was the problem). This has more or less pushed me away from Raid, and tempted me to install an SSD to replace the failed drive. Do you have any suggestions on compatible SSD's or reasons why I should opt for a different route? The failed drive is a Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB.

On another note, would it be a foolish investment to try to upgrade from 260m SLI to 285m SLI? I really enjoy my m17x, and don't want to mess anything up, but I am craving better performance... Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated as well.