Ok this is the unit that i have

Hp Pavilion a1230n Desktop PC (AMD Athlon 64 3700+ Processor, 1 GB RAM, 200 GB Hard Drive, LightScribe Dbl Layer 16x DVD+/-R/RW Drive)

Now somehow my hard drive just stopped working and now when i turn computer on it asks to go into recovery mode. Luckily i have recovery disks, but when i press R to start recovery it says "hard disk drive error". But when i go into BIOS its shows a Maxtor 200 GB Hard drive

Now im pretty much sure my hard drive is toast. I looked inside the unit and on top off hard drive ths is all i coud see Serial ATA 200GB

After all of that here is my question

Now since i dont care about files on computer can i buy another Hard drive and install it and use recovery disk that hp sent me to get me back up and running and if i can any ideas for a reliable hard drive?

Thanks so much all!!

Have you tried booting from the recovery discs? You should be able to do that and from there reinstall Windows.

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yeah but when i run recovery disks it say hard drive disk error!!

What is the exact disk error? You might be able to fix it and not have to re-install. Worst case since you said you don't care about the files you could reformat the hard drive and do a fresh re-install of Windows. But let us know what the disk error says.

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There are other things that can cause this too, such as bad memory. If you can't provide more detailed symptoms then have an experienced friend have a look at it for you and get some further information from them.

Not to sound like a zealot, but you can always use a Linux LiveCD to see if the HD is really causing the problem. When you boot to the Linux CD, it should auto-mount your HD. If you can't get to your HD, or if you get errors when trying to access it, then it's safe to say you need to buy a new drive.

If you can access it under Linux, then it's not a hardware problem but a problem with Windows. In that case, you can fdisk the drive under Linux then reformat it under Windows.

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Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.