Sata hdd problems

[TheOtherOption]

Had this Maxtor 200gig SATA now for about a year or so maybe more - i can't remember which of the two i have is older , and when i dismantled my pc to come home for easter yesterday and then re-connected everything at home the pc was mucking about throwing up "delayed write failed" errors and freezing up ...
I've read microsofts advice page on this and it seems it may not be dying as i thought originally but i still don't see how i can try any of those fixes if the pc just freezes up not long after it's booted
Any ideas >
TIA

 

[TheOtherOption]

I now have the hard drive connected but disabled within windows so can work on it without the crashing - but i still don't know what i can do to resolve the problem ... am going to try the registry edit from the link in the first post

 

[TheOtherOption]

1. Click Start, click Run, in the Open: box type regedit, and then click OK.
2. Locate the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management
3. In the right pane, right-click the value SystemPages, and then click Modify.
4. In the Value data box, type the following value: 0xFFFFFFFF and then click OK.
5. Exit Registry Editor.

I tried the above and it seem to work if only on a temporary basis - recon its worth just copying it all off and buying a new hard drive ?