[Techtalk] method to replace bad disk

[Sunbird]

What would be the better way of reconstituting a failed disk in windows xp?

I have at the ready an iso, CloneZilla Live, hoping it could be so easy, but suspect not.
The failed disk occurred, I think, when I deleted a folder that appeared to have a file infected by virus, reported by AVG.

I discovered it during scandisk during reboot.  I don't have the details of the failure, just that the scandisk never ended, finding umpteen zillion errors. So I aborted and then windows booted, and then kept rebooting itself.  So I figured I wrecked it.  Huge disk too.  Many apps are installed on it.  Disk L:, so not the root drive.

So I have a usb very large external disk to backup or clone, hopefully.  But I want to do it right, so am asking for suggestions about how to go about it properly.

I have the docs in front of me for CloneZilla, but am thinking that windows will not understand what I want to do and I will mess it up.

-- Pat