My usb ports are also malfunctioning badly. When copying something the paths will suddenly not exist and when I go to Computer to look at the drives, it says they are there, but the contents are empty or messed up. This is on my G60 243CL Hp laptop.
To do a reinstall on the same partition usually what I do is make single folder , call it "backup", then place all the files I want to keep in there. Use cut and paste, not copy and paste to put them there because it has the same end effect , just a lot quicker. Then do the reinstall without formatting.
Quote