[GYPSY286]

Thanks for all the quick responses. Are hard drives expensive?

[ChadGore]

50 to 300 dollars, depending on how much storage space you'de like, and how fast of a drive you need.

[goldstategop]

Not really. You can get them for a good deal on Ebay. And next time be sure to back up the contents of your entire hard drive to a CD so you can just boot it up on a new one without having to reinstall everything. There's where Norton Ghost comes in handy in a situation like this.

[Woodman]

I'll chime in with it's the hard drive. If you can't run the OEM recovery program, I would buy a new one install it, restore the OS Make the OLD Drive a slave and reinstall it. You "MAY" be able to retrieve something from the old drive, but I wouldn't bet the bank on it.

A new system can be had for about $400 so I wouldn't spend money on any fast big drive unless the computer is at least above a 1 Gig system, otherwise a 20-40 GB Drive can be had for about $30.