John,

With my old HP, I was able to visit HP's website and upgrade software for that system's components. I presume I'll be able to do the same thing with this HP.

I visited with some neighbors last night, and was told of a computer crash they experienced, in which the external 120gig backup drive was affected. It had been pretty full, as much as 80% was in use, but now they can now only see it as a 5 gig drive. I know I've read discussion of that here at Mudcat, but because the descriptive terms are so general, I don't think a search will take me to the thread.

I don't know how they went about restoring the computer to the functionality it has now, but there wasn't a backup. Any thoughts on what might be plaguing the system and how to get access to that hard drive data?

SRS