Question : Problem: anyway to tell if the hard drive is bad?

So im trying to image this computer.  I have imaged it a couple times.  I used symentec ghost to image it once and after the image was complete I went to boot it up and it says boot disk failure.   I tried using anothere program, sefl image from windows ultimate boot cd, and the drive would not boot again.  any ideas?  

Answer : Problem: anyway to tell if the hard drive is bad?

ummmm...  nevermind.   I had an external hard drive plugged in.