I had a similar experience recently. My hard drive gronched and I hadn't
backed up much on it, either. Dumb ol' me. It was about four years old,
too, and in fact when I checked the warranty date on the drive itself, I
found that the warranty had expired about six months previously.

I don't think it's related, but the power supply in my computer failed at
about the same time. I ended up buying a new hard drive and a new computer
at the same time.

I should probably look into upgrading the motherboard and processor soon,
too, but I'm not asking for the system to do very much in the way of
graphics, so that's on the back burner.

Like yourself, I'm slowly teaching myself more about computer hardware and
software. Some local friends have been very helpful, and so have more
distant ones on the Usenet groups. There's a lot to learn...