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Fedora 12 (Constantine) How to remap bad sectors of HDD?

Hi, the problem I'm facing is pretty mind boggling to myself. I'm currently using Fedora 12 as seen in the subject, and I'm fairly new to it, but recently I've had a problem with my HDD. The problem is bad sectors and I've read up on how they occur but not many places I've searched actually explains how to deal with this. When I start up my laptop (Acer 5610z) I get a SMART error saying "predicted disk failure, please back up data and replace drive." Along those lines, so I got curious and used Disk Analyzer this roughly what it says:

Reallocated Sector Count: Failing Normalized:129
Worst:129
Threshold:140
Value:561 Sectors

Current Pending Sector Count: Warning Normalized:200
Worst:200
Threshold:0
Value:5

That's all the messages I know of so far, I wouldn't normally complain it's just my older one failed recently and I bought this about a week ago and installed it. I've also checked it was in place properly and nothing was wrong. If you require any further information feel free to ask, thanks for the help and time in advance. :)

Where did you get the new drive? Did the old drive display the same symptoms before it died?

I bought the new HDD from a local computing shop. It was new and in packaging. It's a Western Digital 320GB Sata drive. Yes, it displayed similar problems just it lasted a lot longer and I'm wondering what's causing this.

Thanks.

It's possible the power supply is bad. Or a problem with the motherboard. Either way is bad news. You might want to shop around for another lappy. Is this Acer still under warranty?

Nope, the Acer's warranty ran out around 3 months ago. I'm pretty :( about me getting this and it failing almost week later, no worries though. The HDD is still under warranty :)

I have purchased several hard drives that have failed within the first week or so. There maybe nothing wrong with your laptop. Download the diagnostic tools from WD and see what errors turn up.

Also ask around to see if other people who purchased from that store had also gotten defective products. If so try to get a refund and get another HD from another more reputable place.

fwiw, I had 2 WD 2.5" SATA drives fail on me last year, one after about a month's use, the warranty replacement didn't even make it past the first day! These were confirmed as controller failures (the disk's onboard controller, not the PCs). Both were from a very reputable supplier and each had serial numbers different enough for it not to be just a bad batch - supplier ensured this (unless it was a very big bad batch !!). A third (non-WD) disk is still running fine after 8 months.

WD has a downloadable diagnostic tool called "Lifeguard" (michaelk referred to it) which is available as a bootable CD image (this should get you to it) - if it really is "bad sectors" then it won't fix them but at least will help confirm the problem.

But, as has been hinted at, if this has happened on the same machine with a previous hdd then I'd be seriously suspecting the machine is causing the problem. Make sure you retrieve what data you can and plan to buy a new laptop. Also not the first Acer I've seen develop terminal issues soon after warranty expiration. btw, the only reason I replaced the disk in the first place was to get a bigger disk - no failure on the original.

IG