Hard drive or new 'puter? Ask a local computer shop to build you a new computer. It may cost a bit more, but you can usually get them to transfer all of your setup and data to the new drive while they are setting up the new machine.

This has several benefits, including saving you the hassle of transferring the data yourself, assuming that you *did* make a backup of your data on a frequent basis. You will generally get a new operating system - Microsloth has an annoying habit of refusing to support their older versions - anything older than what I have now - of Windows, much sooner than the version actually expires on your system. You will also have a computer free from all the detrius that has accumulated in your present system over the years that you have owned it. (Computers like homes accumulate stuff over the years, and this stuff impedes progress in the same way your collection of widgets keeps you from moving freely about your house.) This and the fact that computers now come with hard drives larger than our wildest dreams, a few years ago, means that your new system will perform a lot better than your old one could ever hope to do. You will probably get an up to date version of effective virus detecting software which can keep lots of nasty programs out of your system for the next year or until the free updates run out.

Buying an inexpensive machine from a TV advertisment or a discount store will save you money, but you will have to work to recover the data, your work of the past few years, from your old and admittedly dodgy current drive, and there will always be something that you fail to transfer over, which you will only discover long after the computer has made its last trip to the land fill.

Dave