Thank you for your reply. It does seem that most modern hard drives are Advanced Format. I have found a Sata II (Standard format) drive, same make and size as my old drive, and that has accepted recovery discs. The laptop is still running much hotter than with the original drive (which has not yet failed) but not so hot as to shut it down, as it did with the larger 500GB drive (which was also standard format and same speed but Sata III). The original drive was Sata I - is that what you mean by type? I can't find the exact same model of drive as they're not made any more and rare used ones sound a bit iffy. The nearest I could get was a Sata II by the same manufacturer and 320GB again. The speed is the same (5400rpm). But my experience so far is that any replacement drive makes the machine run hot (even this Sata II at 5400rpm). If I put the original drive back in it runs cool again. And if it's a larger drive than 320GB it runs even hotter. It even overheated and shut down with a 250GB Samsung SSD in (which is supposed to be backwards compatible).
I did contact Sony but haven't heard anything back yet.