I should add that if you do show a small amount of bad sectors, you could get away with running it in the laptop, and do a FAST (Files and Settings Transfer) Wizard. This not only saves your important files, but also everything in Oulook Express, Favorites, some program settings, and more. I usually use an external drive to save the FAST folder to, or in a pinch you can save it to your desktop - just make sure you transfer that folder to another drive before formatting that old drive! Windows already knows you have bad sections on that hard drive and it will avoid storing anything there. But be aware: once a hard drive starts going bad, it is not unlike sifting sand onto a record player playing a record. You will have debris (from the bad sectors) on the surface, and it is a chain reaction. I have seen hard drives go bad in as little as an hour with 4 kb of bad sectors and run as long as 2 months with 4kb of the same. I clone my hard drives to new ones every 2 years.

#1 failure in computers is the hard drive. The storage facility. Everything you do on a computer is copied from the hard drive into RAM memory. If you have too much stuff opened up, or too much stuff running in the background (starting with Windows), and you don't have enough RAM to accept it all, it becomes a constant battle between the RAM and the Hard Drive. This can also contribute to early hard drive failure because it is always running and writing. It's like leaving your car idling in the garage instead of shutting it off

#2 falure is power supplies. Those are easy and cheap to replace and have no effect on hard drives and the place where all your important stuff is stored.

I could go on and on about how computers work if you want to hear more. I've just scratched the surface.