Well, after a couple years of faithful service one of my laptops has now got a failed (I think) hard drive. The other day it just would not start up - would not get past the initial Windows XP low res startup screed.

Eventually managed to get it started after a disk check (during which it truncated and removed various files), then re-started it again and seemed to load up OK (although taking 10 times longer than it should). I could see all my photos etc in the D drive (phew!) but was still running like a dog.

Tried system restore but it seems that one of the files removed during the disk check was the system restore file - so no option to restore.

Restarted again and needed another disk check - this check has now been running for 36hours and is 85% through... Lots of bad sectors are being found on C drive - I'm pretty sure that it's screwed.

SO! Next thing is - do I just replace the whole laptop (please say yes

) with a nice 17" Dell hi-res thing (by the way - this is our main computer. Have toyed with getting a desktop (would much prefer it actually) but just so inconvenient having it tucked away in the office or wherever. Our laptops are always on and always in the kitchen/living area) or just buy a new hard drive?

Plan could be;

1. Remove existing hard drive and put in an external case
2. Buy new hard drive for laptop (current one is 80GB - can I go up to, say, 250GB without issues??)
3. Can I then just stick in the system recovery disk that came with the laptop to re-install XP on the new drive??

This sounds too easy - particularly the installing XP on a fresh drive bit - I can't quite see this happening. If this is a no-no, what do I do? Shell out for a new operating system to install on the new hard drive??

Sorry for the long post - I'm sure this can be sorted one way or another and I'm pretty certain the photos are ok on the disk (I have a back up of most anyway) so not too worried about that. Just weather I am lookong at new hard drive + new operating system or just get a new laptop? (I can effectively get about 45% off by buying through work)

Thanks for taking the time to read and I look forward to any assistance!!

Cheers,

Graham