If the only thing wrong with your disk is that it has a few bad tracks, it would help to run ScanDisk.

1. Open "My Computer"
2. Right-click on the drive name—probably Local Disk (C:)
3. Click on "Properties" in the pop-up menu.
4. Click the "Tools" tab.
5. Under "Error Checking" click "Check Now."
6. Check both options boxes
7. Click "Start."

If there are any bad tracks or sectors on the drive, this will find and flag them so that the computer will never again try to write data on those tracks. Your drive will be good as new, except that it will look somewhat smaller—assuming that's what the problem was to begin with.

If there are any files already occupying bad tracks, those files might be trashed, but if that were the case, I think you would have discovered it when you tried to make backups.

Also consider the possibility that there is a virus in the system that makes it look as if there is something wrong with the disk drive, when there's nothing physically wrong with it. Any good antivirus program should be able to fix this.