Ubuntu: Gave up waiting for root device

[teroot]

Upon booting Ubuntu 12.04 I received a black screen stating "Gave up waiting for root device", and dropped into a Busy Box shell. I tried another cold boot and eventually managed to boot back into Ubuntu, but everything had a major lag. After several unsuccessful attempts to boot again, I attempted to re-install 12.04 and received the following message "error: no module specified; error: no suitable mode found; error: unknown command 'terminal'". I downloaded the 13.10 installation iso and tried to install it from a USB stick, it froze about 25% of the way through both times I attempted to install. I even went and tried a 10.04 installation CD and the installation failed, saying there was an error copying files to the hard disk because it was a read-only file system. I have used the disk partitioner in all 3 live CDs to reformat the entire HDD before each installation. At this point I can't think of anything other than a corrupted HDD. Should I go ahead and just purchase a new one?

 

[popatim]

After using the manufacturers utility to verify the drive is failing you can use the serial # off the drive to see if its still under warranty and then decide what to do.