New Harddrive?

[GregW]

My laptop is becoming slow and makes noise at start up.
Based on what I've heard in the past and read, this usually means the hard drive is about to fail. I quickly backed up all the content on the computer- so that fixes that concern.

I like this laptop and haven't had any other issues with it. It has an i7 and 6 gb of ram so it is certainly capable for what I need it for.
Is the hard drive easily replacable on a laptop? At this point I'd go towards a SSD. The prices have come down- but my question is how much to get it up and running. I don't think I'd be able to do this myself, so I'd have to pay the fees for the install. At this point is it worth it? I imagine I'd also have to buy a new copy of Windows 7?