Bad hard drive help!

[Morbid Angel]

I've noticed my system lagging a little, so I desided to reboot. Upon winxp screen it took amaizingly long time, about 10 times longer to boot then usual. Next time I rebooted, bios had printed me a warning:
SMART reports Drive status Capoble and BAD!

I had run a few diagnostics software from my hard drives manufacturer's website (western digital) and it had told me that my primary drive has a Raw Read Error Rate Failure.
The system is still functioning, but I am noticing slowdowns randomly and each time the hard drive starts spinning, I break the sweat thinking is this its last time?

Any one had this happen before? what corse of action one should take in this kind of situation?
I have backed up everything while it still works...

My drive is Western Digital Raptor 10,000 rpm 150 gb.
Thanks guys.

[simmsimaging]

Why not just replace the drive?

[rmejia]

I have a Western Digital Raptor 10,000 rpm 160 gb for my main c: drive, and this is my second one of these. The first one started giving me errors, starting little by little to have problems. It got to the point where the system would sometimes start and other times it would give an error. I have a Dell so I downloaded the resource cd and ran the tests on the hard disk: It failed the confidence test, read test and verify test. Even with this the drive would still boot, but ... it was definitely having problems. I called Dell and they gave me a new drive.

I think you should replace the drive. Looks like it's going down. Better to be safe than sorry.

[Morbid Angel]

yeah that sounds like what needs to be done...err just hate the hussle.

[simmsimaging]

My experience with HD's is that once they start doing odd things it's just time to get rid of it. Everytime I have tried otherwise I've paid for it by having the hassle anyway, just right in the middle of a job instead of in between them

If you mirror backup your machine (I use Acronis True Image) then it's really not a big deal to switch out the drive.

b

[rmejia]

I also have 2 drives in mirror raid where I store all my stuff (d: drive) ... and one of them says it Failed in the raid manager ... I hate hard drives , it's not if they will fail ... it's all about when they will fail. At least hard drive prices aren't that bad now a days, and everything is backed up!