"Disk I/O Error"

Hi,

I recently built a new Athlon system. However, when I tried to move
my old storage HD to the new computer and set it as a slave to the new
HD with XP installed, everything would run veeerrry slowly, and there
are strange cycling ticking noises coming from the old drive. It
never got past the "Starting windows. . . " blue screen.

If I set this old HD as the master (even though it's not a bootable
disk), I get a message stating "Disk I/O Error: Please replace and
press any key to continue" and hangs there indefinitely.

Does this mean the harddisk is dead? I've been using it in my old
computer for 3 years and it has worked fine, and I've just pulled it
out two days ago.

I've also noticed that one pin on the IDE connection port is shorter
than the rest! If the side with less number of pins is facing down,
it's the leftmost, top row pin that's about 1 mm shorter than all the
other pins. I've never noticed that before -- would this influence
the I/O of the disk? I tried getting a pair of tweezers and pulling
it out, but it's very firmly in place, suggesting that its been like
that all the time, including the time where it worked just fine in my
old computer.

Any suggestions would be very helpful. If possible, I'd like to
rescue the information in the disk lots of sentimental memories. . .

Thanks!

Rabby