Failing Hard-drive issue but having major difficulty saving wanted files. Help!

Last week I, unfortunately, had a new AT&T Uverse package installed. I've had nothing but major problems since. My Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop with Windows Vista Basic was working okay until the new service was installed. I use the laptop through Wi-fi. It would not recognize the wi-fi and I kept losing service. Then some strange things started happening with my laptop in connection with the new wi-fi and my computer froze and I had no choice but to crash out. After that fatal moment I could not get back into my main user profile at all. There were no system restore points (they were wiped somehow) and no 'last good logon' or startup. I ran a diagnostics test and it said there were major hard drive issues. Basically the hard-drive is now dying (although, odd, before this it was just fine). After running disk repair on my computer I was finally able to get back into my main profile but it would not load my desktop. I thought I had lost everything at first, but I learned that the profile was now corrupted and I had to create a new profile on the laptop. I learned how to do this and I transferred the profile successfully. I debated whether to delete the old profile but in the end I did, whether right or wrong it's too late.

I then start saving files I want to flash drives. Unfortunately back-up is also not working. Most files I am not having any issue with at all. My video files are a problem. I have been successful with some, but others I get an I/O issue warning and I can't get the to transfer to the flash drive. My laptop system is NTSF and the USB flash drive is FAT. What I started noticing is that the videos that did transfer with no problems have a different ownership than the ones that won't and get the i/o warning. The videos that copy say 'Everyone' as owner. The videos that will not say 'Home/' and my newly created profile name. If that is the issue preventing them from copying how do I change it? I've tried changing ownership and it's not working. Once I get this issue resolved and save my videos and files to flash drives I can move on to working on other issues with the laptop. Not sure if hard-drive is repairable, worth repairing, or replacing.

So, the question is how do I change the ownership of these video files, assuming that will correct the issue so that I can transfer them to USB flash drive? Thanks for any help!

You could try with adding take ownership to the right click menu

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/112795-context-menu-take-ownership.html

Or you could replace the faulty drive and use a caddy to put you failing drive in and use it as a usb drive

Have you run chkdsk c: /f from a Elevated Command Prompt yet?

If not do so. The reboot and let it run, see if that fixes some of the drive corruption.