Computer...

My faithful pc is starting to give up on me. The 750gb hard drive I was once so impressed with has started to develop bad sectors so it is backup time.
Not only backing up, now comes the arduous task of obtaining a new hard drive and putting an operating system on it. There is always Windows but since computers now only come with rescue disks set for the specific hardware, the version of Windows I technically purchased with my pc is effectively useless.
I'm considering a Linux box, especially as the advent of 'easy Linux' like ubuntu make the whole process a lot easier. It would, however mean that gaming would be impossible.
I'll have a think while I spend a few hours protecting data...