New hard disk in my future?

[BeeJayEmm]

My son's R60 (9456-01U) has been randomly freezing. I tried to use Windows chkdsk but it never completed. We decided to recover to factory load and first tried to do a backup with Acronis, during which it froze. I ran PC Dr. for DOS and the disk failed the Linear Verify test. Then I ran the Hitachi DFT and it said there were corrupt sectors, giving the option to try to repair them or erase the disk. I tried the former but got a "Failure code 0x70-Defective device." Then I tried the erase option and got another "Failure code 0x75-Defective device. Component failure." Since it was after hours, I used recovery disks, which seemed to work. I ran Windows chkdsk again and this time it completed, telling me it "added 3426 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File" and now there are 13704KB in bad sectors (about 13.4 MB).

Is it smart (no pun intended) to keep using this drive, now that the bad clusters are supposedly marked, or should I call for a replacement? The ThinkPad is still under warranty. Is there any point in rerunning PC Dr. or DFT now? Thanks a lot for looking at this.

Brian

[spuddog]

I would definitely get it replaced under warranty if I could. It may last for a while but it will only get worse. Backup everything immediately.

Scott