Dying Hard Drive. Pls help: where to start

Toshiba Sattelite laptop (XP Pro, SP2, 500Mb, 60Gb) Event log showed 'error in paging' over the last couple of days.
I ran chkdsk /r on startup which only reported some file inconsistencies fixed. Event log showed: 'Event ID: 1001 Read failure with status 0xc0000185 at offset 0xb92f26000 for 0x10000 bytes.'

Next day it progressed to 'paging error' events every few minutes & a couple of BSODs. On subsequent startups the event log showed: Event ID: 1000 "Performance counters for the WmiApRpl (WmiApRpl) service were loaded successfully. The Record Data contains the new index values assigned to this service." Followed by unloading, loading again.

Now, strange coincidence or something malicious afoot?

I have an external drive (USB) & was meanwhile clearing space for backing up the laptop & left it going overnight leaving 7Gb (out of 110) free. Next tried to defrag the external drive (not effiicient etc & seemed like a good idea. Lord knows why). Defrag (the system one) wouldnt go. I tried to access the drive via Explorer & it just hung there trying to seek (not 'unresponsive'). Drive still showed connected.

Event log now showing similar kinds of hard disk errors on the external drive (dont remember ID & exact wording). Tried chkdsk from tools with fixes selected but it wouldnt run.

Then I spent the next 18hrs pursuing a possible virus type cause to no avail. Updated with Microsoft a few weeks ago so didnt check there but ran (all with latest updates immediately applied) a2, XoftSpy, AntiVir. Results were a variety of tracking cookie type annoyances & the only serious things were a key logger & a virus in a zip file Ive never opened & has been in that folder for a year.

Wasted a LOT of time. Next check of Event log showed:
Event ID 52: 'The driver has detected that device \Device\Harddisk0\DR0 has predicted that it will fail. Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.'

Panic ensued as I began to copy vital files to another pc on the network. Left it running overnight & woke up to BSOD. Not much got saved. Turned off laptop & ran here.

I wasted so much time in which I could have made a full backup & I dont know what to do next. Try some of the hard drive tools I found here (so many, which is the best fit for the problem to fork out the $ for ??).

I see only 2 options: attempt to restore the drive & then backup my files,
or: attempt backing up files between BSODs?
Obviously I cant be sure how long it has left.

Any advice on what to try next will be much appreciated!

(meanwhile external drive hooked up to another pc & running chkdsk (from system gui) & it has run through the first 3 stages fine & has been on stage 4 showing 1st increment of progress after 4 hours. It hasnt hung. Is this normal or does it indicate its encountering errors?

 

It seems that a failing harddrive does so when it heats up. If you've ever heard of freezing the harddrive try it with that one and maybe you can get a good backup. I don't know the exact reason cooling works but it did for me & you'll see articles about it on the net.
Get a laptop drive adapter put it in another working desktop system and try to back it up after you've cooled it. I have used Bad Copy Pro to recover files off a failing hard drive & they seemed to work fine after that.

Some other tools I heard worked are HDD Regeneration, and SpinRite

First I'd find the manufacture of the drive and download their diagnostics and see if the drive is going bad.

 

thankyou so much foogoo!

I loathe stereotypes, but being a middle aged female with minimum tech knowledge & no 'geeks' around I guess I fit into the 'differently abled' category when it comes to this stuff. I had put all my faith in getting some help with where to start in this forum. So, Im very much in appreciation of your input.

I will add the results of each step I take to this thread so it is there, for the next hapless troubleshooter with a similar problem, to find.