[ltp] Hard drive going bad ...?

[njcross@sbcglobal.net]

Paul Michael Reilly <pmr@pajato.com> wrote:
> Content-Description=embedded message
> Date: Mon, 04 Sep 2006 13:00:26 -0400
> From: Paul Michael Reilly <pmr@pajato.com>
> To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org, fedora-list@redhat.com
> Subject: [ltp] Hard drive going bad ...?
> Reply-To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
> 
> The smartd daemon (Fedora Rawhide) is starting to indicate that the
> hard drive has pending unreadable sectors:
> 
> Sep  3 08:01:43 roamer smartd[2032]: Device: /dev/hda, 9 Currently 
unreadable (pending) sectors 
> 
> These have been occurring over the past few days on my (~3 year old)
> A31p Thinkpad.  My first take is that the system is trying to tell me
> that it is time to replace the hard drive.  Before ordering a new
> drive, I figured I'd bounce this off the lists for second opinions.

I'm using an old T23 with Mandriva LE 2005. Everything was OK until my
computer started to intermittently  "tick". When that happens the computer 
tends to freeze and on bootup it usually can't find Grub for most of the day! 
So, I've started to use a Mandriva liveCD so I can somehow keep working. 

My hard disk is dying, isn't it? *sob*  Is there a way I can replace the hard 
disk and and have Mandriva, and Winblows 2000 pro, transferred so that 
I can keep going without re-installing and setting up again?

Who would you suggest I take my computer to, if I wasn't going to do the  
replacement myself?

Many Thanks,
Nev.