I am sorry if this is not in the correct forum.
I have a 2 year old HP computor that recently started making some noise and then completely stopped. The error reading was, Hard Drive Failed.
A call to HP proved this was out of warrenty. I bought a new 160G hard drive and then found out I had no XP Home install disks. HP stated they quit shipping them with computors and they want $300.00 for a new HD with OS installed.
My question is can I retrieve my OS from a bad HD or do I have to Buy the OS twice. I have heard about freezing the bad drive and connecting as a slave to possibly mirror on to new drive.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

here is a thread re: freezing

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.c...=398225&page=1

if it would work you would need software from your new drive manufacturer to boot a setup copy disk utility. I know Maxtor has this feature but am unsure of others.

if you need to buy a new xp get a full version so you wont have this problem again.

HTH