Can recovery disks fix a "failed" hard drive?

It is a possibility that it is just some bad sectors that will be left unused after reformat. But it really sound like your hard drive is failing. Good News is...hard drives are relatively cheap. Just make sure that you get the same Connector type and you can use the recovery disk on the new drive (i would disconnect the old drive during the recovery process) Then after windows is reinstalled...transfer any doents you can salvage to the new drive.