Sony Vaio Desktop - Recovery after harddisk failure

Sony Vaio Desktop - Recovery after harddisk failure
(hope this info helps someone out there)

Is this "delayed write" failure a Win XP problem or a Maxtor problem?

Sony Vaio Desktop model: PCV-RS720G
Win XP Home with SP2 (pre-installed by Sony)
System purchase date: 12/2004
Harddisk failure date: 7/2005
Harddisk: Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 200GB SATA/150 (3.5 Series)
HD Manufacture Date: 10/2004

I just encountered the notorious Win XP "Delayed Write" failure message.
It looked like XP was trying to write a registry entry when it croaked.
After a shutdown, the system would no longer boot.
Attempting to boot Win XP into Safe Mode caused the system to restart repeatedly (after it loaded System32\Drivers\Mup.sys)

Partition Magic 8 reported Critical Error 1601 (NTFS error) on the hidden 6GB partition created by Sony, and Critical Error 45
(checksum error) on the C: partition.
PM could not fix any of the partition errors.

Sony Tech Support (chat) told me to restore the system with my Vaio Recovery disks: 1 startup CD, and 1 DVD containing all the
software the Vaio ships out with.
But I didn't want to lose all my data on the HD just yet.

Sony Tech Support (toll-free number) said I could buy another HD, and try the Vaio Restore on the new HD, then try to copy the files
from the damaged HD installed as a secondary.
They would not officially support this technique.

Booting Caldera DR-DOS 7.3 (with the Read-Only NTFS Filesystem drivers) from a 3.5" floppy enabled me to read most of the C: drive,
and I was determined to get my data off the drive.
But the USB HDD drivers in DR-DOS would not recognize an external USB hard disk I had, so I couldn't copy the files off the damaged
hard disk

Booting with Symantec SystemWorks 2005's "Recovery Disk" CD enabled me to access my external USB hard disk, but it could not see the
files on the damaged hard disk

So I bought a Western Digital 300GB SATA HD ($139 (after $50 rebate), from Fry's), partitioned it into 6 + 280 , with the 280GB as
an active primary partition.

The Sony Vaio Recovery process went smoothly.
The hidden 6GB partition somehow became a hidden 5GB partition after the Vaio Restore.
But I'm glad the Sony Vaio Restore/Recovery process worked as advertised

When I booted Win XP off the new HD, Win XP was not able to read the damaged Maxtor harddisk.
Neither did Norton SystemWorks 2003's Disk Doctor
And PM 8 still reported a Critical Error 1601 on the hidden 5GB partition on the new HD
Is the Sony Recovery process causing the 1601 Critical Error in the partition area?

I didn't want to see another HD failure in 8 months when my HD fills up, so I decided to use PM to get rid of the hidden partition
and merge it with the NTFS partition.
I also created a 40GB FAT32 partition at the end of the WD HD so that I could write to it from DR-DOS.

I booted back into DR-DOS and painfully copied the files I wanted off the damaged Maxtor HD to the FAT32 partition on the new WD HD.