Damaged hard drive partition?

My Acer Aspire 6920 laptop froze during the second stage of a windows update and hasn't worked properly since. I've scanned it and the error came up saying that some of my hard drive partitions were unreadable. I've done the Alt+F10 computer reformat, I've tried repairing it from a windows boot disc, I've tried talking to it soothingly. I'm aware that this is most likely a 'replace your hard drive' sort of thing, but before I shell out over �200 for a new one I thought I'd give this a go.