I have a Western Digital (WDC WD800BB-00JHA0) disk with 80GB with two partitions, one is 53,6 and other 20,8 GB, on the larger one I have WinXP SP2 installed
The configuration is some 2 yrs 10 months old, and I got this problem during summer. During work, it sounded as if the drive simply stops and there was no light indicator and system would become irresponsible for few moments until it starts working.
Then it stopped booting up, giving me the blue screen. When I started to reinstall windows, it said that HDD is corrupted and I had to format it, losing many great things.
now, few days ago, i started the PC, and again the same thing, blue screen, reinstalled the windows and it works good, though at moments it seems as if HDD is not working and if I am copying something, it stops until indicator starts again.
but the other partition remains intact, so it doesn't seem to be physical problem? What should I do to make my data safer (and not to buy a new HDD)?
thanks in advance

It is a physical problem - a bunch of bad sectors probably. Test the drive with the WD diagnostic utility to be sure.

Getting a new (or at least error-free) hard drive would be the right thing to do.

If you really want to stretch the penny (and risk your data), then you could write down the bad sector locations on the drive and then create partitions around the bad area(s) to use the drive. You have to back up all your needed data first of course.