There's another post about this, but I don't have enough 'points' to say anything on that thread. So I'll start my own ... with more details!

My computer still boots, but gnome domain reports problems with HDD smart. This has been confirmed in the bios as it makes me press f1 to boot up now. I tried running HDD disk check in the bios, but it fails running the tests. As in, running the tests failed not that the tests themselves indicated a failed drive. Here is what disk utility is reporting as failing:

Reallocated Sector Count FAILING Normalized: 132 Worst: 132 Threshold: 140 Value: 544 Current Pending Sector Count WARNING Normalized: 200 Worst: 1 Threshold: 0 Value: 2

Is this related to the insane number of DRDY errors on the drive?

kernel: [51345.233069] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
kernel: [51345.233076] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x4
kernel: [51345.233081] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA
kernel: [51345.233090] ata1.00: cmd c8/00:00:00:8b:4a/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 131072 in
kernel: [51345.233092]          res 51/40:00:a8:8b:4a/10:04:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
kernel: [51345.233097] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
kernel: [51345.233103] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
kernel: [51345.291929] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
kernel: [51345.291944] ata1: EH complete
kernel: [51347.682748] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
kernel: [51347.682754] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x4
kernel: [51347.682759] ata1.00: failed command: READ DMA
kernel: [51347.682768] ata1.00: cmd c8/00:00:00:8b:4a/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 131072 in
kernel: [51347.682770]          res 51/40:00:a8:8b:4a/10:04:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
kernel: [51347.682774] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
kernel: [51347.682777] ata1.00: error: { UNC }

Did Ubuntu 10.10 and/or EXT4 eat my work laptop? What steps can I take to backup my important information, which is probably the home folder. Please include steps to recover my data on the new hard drive as well. It does me little good to have backups I can't use.