On second thought...
...maybe the aborted format attempt was a good thing. After having a friend take a look at it, and fix the things I had problems with, he discovered that the harddrive had bad sections and was starting to crap out. At least now I have everything crucial backed up (on both my powerbook and a portable harddrive), and my desktop tower now just needs a new harddrive. This being said, I wouldn't mind a new desktop and laptop (desktop is 8 years old and the laptop I bought is 4 or 5), but they'll do for now. They still run very well for as old as they are. I'm just glad I was able to back up my files, instead of the harddrive crashing on me and causing me to lose everything.