SMART Event ocurred saying the hard drive may fail. What should I do?

It seems every thread I start, I always begin by saying i'm sorry if I put this on the wrong section...so let's just skip that part xD

Anyway, my friends laptop (which has different specs from that one, a 2,4ghz dual core, a 9M series GPU and 4gb RAM) started getting this SMART event ocurred thing like 3 years ago. So, being a dumba** back then, I thought formatting/reinstalling OS would solve the problem. So I did. Installed W7 HP x86, used Driver Genius to install all drivers and SURPRISE the error was still there. So he kept the computer as it was, and surprisingly it survived all these years. Nothing happened really, he just used his laptop for his usual stuff with no problems whatsoever...weird.

But just recently he asked me to install W7 HP x64, so he could use Sony Vegas Pro 12 (for some reason, Vegas 12 only exists for x64...and if there is a x86 I can't find it). So I did, and installed it...and then the problems started. The laptop is now crashing frequently, recovering from it in like 20 seconds every time. It works I guess, and you can copy around and mess with stuff on the computer, but after awhile it eventually crashes for 15-20 seconds. I have no idea why this is happening, and only then I thought of his SMART event error so I downloaded WD diagnostic tool, clicked the "view SMART data" button and everythin was right except for "re-allocated sector count" which was 117 at value, 117 at worst and 140 at threshold...could this last formatting fried his hard drive for good?

His warranty was gone even before he ever had the SMART event, he has the laptop for like 5 years now. Is it because of the x64 windows. Is there a logical reason for it not work properly on this laptop? Or was the excessive formatting that damaged the hard drive for good?

Thank you for your time.

I would immediately backup all data to a different hard drive.

A reallocated sector count means that one or more sectors on a hard drive are bad. Every modern hard drive has spare sectors available and the bad sectors are "reallocated" (transferred) to a spare good sector. But once you run out of spare sectors, the hard drive will usually suffer a sudden and catastrophic failure.

I believe the hard drive was already in a near failure status when you formatted and installed the x64 operating system. That is what probably pushed the drive over the edge. But I also believe the drive was going to fail anyway even if you hadn't installed the x64 OS.

So all he needs is a new drive, right? If i buy him a new hard drive, would that fix it? But if i did that, the computet wouldn't be able to boot right? Because of those extra partitions, with other necessary data like BIOS right? I have never done this, so i'm pretty much clueless on this hard drive stuff xD

Thank you for your help

Hi Kratos Aurion, Have a look here http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html This will help you