Sorry, this an M$ solution, not a linux one... I got given an old pent laptop by a friend after a certain Chch laptop company said they could not retrieve his data nor fix his laptop HD, and he should buy a new one from them...
Cutting the long story short, I retrieved his data in 10 minutes and then used Partition Magic (I think) to lock out the bad sectors, with a generous amount of 'padding' on either side of the sketchy area. The laptop soliders on still, two, maybe three years later. Unless someone ever fdisk's it... Maybe try that?
