Hard drives can go bad. You should be able to get an RMA on the drive, it
was probably faulty from the start. You can log into the Western Digital
website and do it from there, as long as it is not an OEM HD. They are
usually very fast at getting you a replacement. You should be able to do a
backup to a external hard drive, or to DVD's and then restore to the new HD
when it comes.

Dustin Harper
dharper@vistarip.com
http://www.vistarip.com

Hard drive failure can occur at any time and there isn't a hard and fast way
of knowing that it is going to fail. As an example, I purchased a brand new
PC about 4 months ago, got it home and everything was fine. The next day I
booted up the machine and got a 'can't find operating system' error. As I
hadn't added any of my usual software my easiest option was to use the
recovery disk that came with my system to re-install the operating system.
This took around 15 minutes to do and everything was fine again. After 2
hours on the PC I closed it down. 3 hours later when I re-booted up I got
the same 'can't find operating system' error, so again I used the recovery
disk and put things right. This happened for 3 days running. After this
length of time I was becoming extremely frustrated so I download Seagate'
Sea Tool diagnostics (the drive was a Seagate SATA). The first pass
discovered nothing. At this point I had had enough so I packed the PC into
it's box and took it back to the store. I spent two hours at the store
trying to convince them that something was wrong. I even watched them do a
sea tool diagnostic test and, again, I came up blank. The were all for
packing me off for wasting their time when the technician rather rudely
pointed out that 'you are not a technician so you don' know what you are
talking about. The PC is fine.' That 'really' but my back up, so I proceeded
to give the technician my business card and list of credentials and asking
'what part of those credentials give you the impression that I haven't a
clue what I am talking about?' I suggest you do an advanced sea tool
diagnostic and keep running it until the error pops up, because I'm not
leaving until you sort the problem. Fifteen minutes later an apologetic
technician return and said 'yes you were right the hard drive has a bad
sector.' The PC was replaced and everything worked fine.

From your previous posts I gather you have used the Western Digital
Diagnostics and an error was returned. Obviously You have contacted western
digital and they are in the process of sorting the problem out.

If SP1 is trying to write to a bad sector on your drive then this 'may' be
the reason installation fails. It can also be due to drivers that need
updating on our system. You may like to look at this knowledge base article
to see if anything applies to your system:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=948343 Also take a look at this link to:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/Help/133c8953-c9cd-4fa5-8883-03e9
1bb6f2021033.mspx