Hard drive issues

[tjtz]

Ok, I have had this computer for quite a while now, it's a AMD Athlon (800MHz) with 256 MB of RAM running windows 98 SE. Ever since we got this machine (built buy a company currently out of bussiness, i think they died the week after they sold us our computer, that's what you get when you go to a computer show/fair and you don't know jack about computers) we have had problems with the hard drive. It's had an error on it and that error has for the first time stopped it from booting up. I was considering buying a new HD, nothing fancy, just a replacement. I currently have a Western Digital 30.1 GB VDMA/66 HD. Now I understand how computers work for the most part but when it comes to hard drives and disk controllers and such I am completely lost. Can I just go out and buy any HD and plug it into my machine, or do I have restrictions, are there any suggestions for which hard drives would be a good replacement for the one I have? Any tips on shopping for hard drives?

Motherboard: ASUS A7V
(JumperFree PC133/VC133
AGP Pro/4X Motherboard)

Oh, also, I was planning on removing the old one. Are there any special procedures I should follow?

[J-Excel]

You can just swap the drives as long as you get one small enough that your motherboard IDE controller can handle. Proly would be OK up to 120GB. If you get a Maxtor ATA-133 drive or a big drive you will likely need a new IDE controller card. My suggestion is to get another smaller Western Digital and keep an eye out on www.spoofee.com, www.slickdeals.net, www.deals2save.com, www.techbargains.com for a bargain.