Please help me interpret the result: Is my hard disk really going to fail?

Right now I'm running Linux Live CD and I used its diagnostic tools and I saw this. Probably this is the reason why my desktop has lots of booting up problems. \

http://i57.tinypic.com/b9ewaw.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/1xz3mu.jpg

If my harddrive is indeed failing, then what kind of harddrive should I buy? My dekstop is almost seven years old so I don't know if my mother can support any harddrive or only certain hdd.

The following is what I am using

System Hardware:
Processor: Athlon LE-1600 @ 2.20GHz (1 Core), Motherboard: Acer WMCP78M, Chipset: NVIDIA MCP78S, Memory: 4096MB, Disk: 320GB Western Digital WD3200AAJS-0, Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8200

 

"Soon" is an ambiguous term. Hard to say when it will actually fail. However, if you have data on there that you don't want to lose, back it up now!

As far as a replacement drive, here is the exact same drive: http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Caviar-WD3200AAJS-Internal/dp/B00361XMAU but you don't need to get that one. You could replace it with virtually any 3.5 inch drive with a SATA interface.

If you replace the hard drive, you will need to re-install the OS and your programs. Do you have the install disks? I don't think I would advise cloning your current drive since you stated it is having booting problems. In this case a clean install would be best.

 

Along with what strollin said (back up your important data immediately), you could also search ebay for the same hard drive and maybe get a better price. I got a 500 GB hard drive for $40 on ebay.

A clean install of your OS, drivers and apps is, also, definitely in order on the new hard drive.

 

A fresh install is not only recommended, but with that many bad sectors you most likely will not be able to clone the failing drive. It could be six days, six weeks, or even six hours until it goes to the great neodymium graveyard in the sky. The average life expectancy of a mechanical HDD is about five years.

What OS are you running?