Fix bad sectors

[Crazyap7]

Hello,
I have an old (8, 9 years old?) Dell laptop that's been running XP since it got here. It's gotten extremely slow in the past years so I figured, since I didn't use it much and don't care much about it anyways, I might as well install Ubuntu on it and mess around in it. I burned the 9.10 ISO on disk and, upon entering the Live Session, it gave me a warning, 'Disk Has Many Bad Sectors'. I opened it up and clicked on more information. All the assessments are good except for two:
Reallocated Sector, Normalized: 100, Worst: 100, Threshold: 24, Value: 327691 sector
-AND-
Current Pending Sector Count, Normalized: 92, Worst: 91, Threshold:0, Value: 9 sectors.
My hard drive is an ATA FUJITSU MHT2030AT.

I was wondering if:
a. Is this of critical importance? Can I still install Ubuntu and run it fine without much in the way of problems?
b. Is there a way to fix it? Even partly, if there's a possibility I could fix the sectors please post!

All I want to be able to do on this computer is use Open Office, view PDFs, and listen to music.

Thanks! If there's anything I can clear up, just ask.

[Revolutionary101]

A. You might not see much in the form of problems, although your computer may run a bit slow. I have a laptop that has around 311 bad sectors that runs a bit slower than it used to. Another thing you might want to do is frequently back up the files you have on your HDD because this may be a sign that your HDD may fail.

B. Sad thing is with bad sectors on a HDD it can't be fixed with anything other than buying a new HDD. Having bad sectors on a HDD is a physical problem with the drive and can't be fixed with the software or OS on the computer.

Also with your HDD having 327,691 bad sectors I think you might just want to install a new HDD.

[Crazyap7]

All right, thanks, I'll try and install anyway. If it doesn't work, oh well, I'll just dump it, as I said, it's a good computer to be messing with as I don't care about it at all. Thank ya!

[Revolutionary101]

You are welcome. I am glad I could help.

[Crazyap7]

Just for future reference to anyone who may read this thread, even with over 300,000 bad sectors, Ubuntu installed and is running perfectly. Hundreds of times faster than my previous windows install.