Hi flo and welcome to Club Vaio.
If the utility you are using can recover or mark bad sectors as unusable then a replacement hard disk may not be necessary, depending in the extent of the damage of course.
Warranty will not cover a replacement HD under these circumstances, but if you have household contents insurance that includes accidental damage then you may very well be covered.
If you send the machine to Sony for repair I would estimate that you will be looking at a bill of over £300, but that is a wild guess. A local repairer would probably charge between £100 and £150, depending on the size of disk.
As far as upgrading memory is concerned have a look at Crucial.com, they are very helpful and competitive on price – install it yourself as Sony will charge you two arms and a leg!
Go n-éirí an bóthar leat
