If your drive did crash, you probably won't be using it now, so it was something else.
A bad sector perhaps ?
It's a bit to late, but if you would have booted with your XP cd you would have found quite some repair options.

Have you concidered installing a 2nd harddrive for your media files ?
that's what I have.
You can always unplug it to make sure nothing happens when you reinstall

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