Okay, LOTS to say, so I'll be brief on most:
- SCANDISK CAN DAMAGE YOUR DATA iff you have an HDD with low-level errors! [ANYTHING that might make a change to ANYTHING on such a disk can MAKE IT WORSE, even IRRECOVERABLE (for non-pro tech's)!]
- Disks under "Safely Remove Hardware" in Windows XP (Vista, too?!?) are simplyl the newer SATA ("serial" ATA) drives, rather that the old IDE (now called PATA, or parallel) drives. NEVER "REMOVE" SUCH DRIVES when/if they contain your SYSTEM (usu "C:") partition ("drive.") [I don't even know if you CAN do that, I've never tried!, and I HAVE NO IDEA why M$ even ALLOWS that to appear!)
This is helpful in that it means that if & when you go out to buy your replacement drive you'll know to buy a SATA drive now! (NBD, as they're running at almost the same $$ now....)
- Replacing an HDD is almost as easy as replacing a light bulb.
- There are more ways to back up data on an HDD than there are ppl in BFM! It mostly depends on what sort of WRITEABLE MEDIA DEVICE you have access to. Me, I do my backups across my LAN to a server, but I recently bought a
really neat little UBS adapter kit ($30) that I use to temp'y hook up an external HDD to which I do (portable) backups.
However backups to DVD are most common, and easiest if you already know how to burn to DVDs on a burner installed on your machine.
Now comes the hard part: the backup SOFTWARE. I use corporate-level (i.e. $$) SW, so Iwon;t recommend what I use. In fact, I won't recommend ANY, unless you feel up to the plunge of "disk imaging." (Which makes an ENTIRE COPY of your "raw" disk/partitions.) In that case I suggest Norton Ghost (v9.0 IF you can find it any more!) Otherwise, just give the backup SW that comes with Windows a try. (I know nothing about it, tho!...)
The main problem will be the amount of MEDIA that you need to do a FULL BACKUP of EVERYTHING on that HDD, tho! Be sure that you have enough media, and BE SURE THAT YOU DO THE BACKUP WITH
VERIFY ENABLED for good measure!
Finally: If you're willing to GAMBLE, or have the prospect of buying a new drive ANYWAY, then simply go out and buy the new drive, IMAGE the old drive onto it *Partition Magic, Norton Ghost, etc.) and you'll not only have a backup, but you'll then have your REPLACEMENT drive all set to go! (It needs one simply bit of tweaking, but that's easy - if you have a working floppy drive....)
I highly recommend the latter if you think it's worth sprinign for a new/extra HDD. WOrst case is that you end up using it for backups if the original drive is okay!