Diskette drive 0 seek failure

Hi all,

I have a problem I need help with. My parents have a Dell E521, with Vista Home. When I started the computer, I get a "diskette drive 0 seek failure." I ran the diagnostics CD, and when I do the drive read/write test, it fails and I get the error message "1100:041F the data written to and read back from the diskette media are not equivalent as expected. The diskette should be corrupted." Does this mean my hard drive is toast, or can it be fixed?? Thanks bunches!!