background i was not able to format my hdd with winxp, everytime it got to 61% it would just stall and sit forever, i tried loading FC4 on it, and it seem to be loading fine, so I deleted all partitions, tried xp again, format bombs at 61% so i ran linux rescue mode and ran mkfs.ext3 -c /dev/hda and it cruised along until basically 61% but it is still going I can see the blocks changing every so often, but it is REALLY REALLY SLOW.

HDD is bad right?

If I create a partition under that size will it be ok until I get a new laptop drive?

OR are there tools I can run to mark the sectors bad and then install like nothing happened and just have some bad spots on the HDD?

I agree that it sounds like a bad drive. If you're really hard-up for disks go ahead and use just the working part of it - but don't be surprised if the rest of the disk croaks on you sometime soon.