Trouble replacing Vaio Hard Drive

Hi, everyone! This is my last try at fixing my laptop myself. Hope I can get some answers.

Can I replace my hard drive without recovery discs?

I have a Sony Vaio VPCEF44FX that is just past its warranty. I powered it on and I received an error (on a black BIOS-looking screen) that said "SMART drive predicts hard drive error. Please consider replacing the drive". I pressed escape, and then I received another BIOS-looking warning saying "Operating System not found". So now I can't even create the recovery disks needed to replace the drive.

I am able to hit F10 when the Vaio logo comes on and can enter the Vaio Care recovery menu. The hard drive error scan tells me there are no errors on my laptop, which contradicts the error message I get at startup.

I was able to run the recovery tool and had Windows running, but it wouldn't write the recovery disks. It kept saying my optical drive wasn't fast enough to write to the media inserted. This happened with DVD+R discs. I went and bought DCD-R discs, but now I'm back to the "Operating System not found" error again.

I tried hitting F10 at startup and trying the "C-drive recovery only" option, but it gives me an error at 3% saying an application failed. I tried multiple times and the error happened each time.

Am I screwed?

 

Yes you now. Before start restoring hdd is formated.

replace HDD, instal clean win7 and after dowload drivers and app from sony web side Sony : VAIO VPCEF4E1R/WI drivers | Download drivers and updates for VPCEF4E1R/WI