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I've just used several utilities to check whether my HDD drive is really failing - I've come to a conclusion that it's the hard disk drive that causes unusual slow downs as my system almost freezes sometimes (HDD light on my laptop is lit all the time when it happens).

It appears that everything is healthy except for "reallocated bad sectors" being at 11. This is the only warning that disk check utilities give me. What does it mean? Is there anything I can do? My drive is running at DMA 5 mode, so that is not a problem.

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The very existence of reallocated bad sectors means your drive is dying. Bad sectors are normally caused by physical damages to the disks' surface which will normally spread due to the high rotation speed of the disk. You should get a new disk and start migrating your data. – billc.cn Dec 4 '11 at 11:29
Hmmm. But is it that bad at the moment? How many bad sectors should alert me that tomorrow I may not turn on my laptop? – Mantas Dec 4 '11 at 12:59
1 detectable bad sector is normally bad enough. The exact number your hard-drive can tolerate depends on its model and basically your luck. You should also monitor other SMART metrics like ECC error rate closely. If that goes beyond the threshold, you should replace your drive immediately. – billc.cn Dec 4 '11 at 13:27
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