HD Scandisk errors... am I screwed?

Hello! This is my first post, I tried searching for an answer but had no luck...

When i run a through scandisk it says I have numerous HD physical errors. It is a 1yo 120GB Maxtor. It still works but seems slow, is there anything I can do to fix it? Or do should I buy an new hard drive?

Thanks for looking!

 

I take it you have ran some form of defrag on the drive recently

A heavily fragmented drive will slow your machine right down.

Just a thought

 

if it tells you that you have bad sectors on your HD then I recommend that you buy a new one because sooner or later a HD with bad sectors WILL die on you.

 

For my experience that is not always the case.

Bad sectors are "quarenteened" and so should no longer affect the running of the drive.

Run scandisk regularly, make sure you defrag often and you should be OK.

 

if you get one bad sector you will most likely get more.

 

Backup any data you can't replace, go into SAFE mode, and defrag (thorough). See if things improve. Also run a couple of good anti-spyware packages.

 

Bad sectors seem to multiply. If I were you I'd get my precious data onto other media right now.

 

Try downloading the MaxBlast utility from Maxtor, run it, and see what it says about the health of your hard drive!

 

Thanks everyone for all the great advice! you geeks rock!