Computer Crash

My Dell computer wouldn't boot last night. I must have gotten a virus. After an hour and a half with a Dell technician we both realized I had to format my hard drive and reload everything. Fortunately I had an old 16 Gb hard drive laying around from a Gateway that was fried in a thunderstorm. With the assistance of another Dell tech I installed it and transferred photos and all sorts of other data that I should have backed up a long time ago. I'll format the original hard after I'm satisfied I got everything I need off of it. Overall a huge pain but glad Dell has technicians willing to spend hours on the phone with me (they probably earn about $20 a day). And really glad that years of photos didn't evaporate.