Or maybe just a new Hard Drive?  I buy a new computer every 3 years, but during those 3 years I almost always get a new hard drive half way through. 

You're probably right about the Hard Drive - but if you want to check the picture cache it is a under:

Preferences - Audio - Configuration File - and the property is PicCacheMB.  I bumped mine up to 2000.

Thanks
That didn't do it so it's looking more and more like the HD
Good idea about getting just a HD..
It would certainly be easier tho if they could just mirror copy this one to the new one.
Can they do that?

I believe it is possible. I tell you what I did and maybe try it. I have 2 drives C and D. C was making a bad scraping sound but still working normally.

I got Acronis True Image and used it to clone the drive. I removed D and put a new fresh drive in there. I used the clone mode not the image mode to do this. In clone mode the new drive is slowly written with every bit of data from the C drive live in real time. Windows actually closes down before this starts and then reboots but not into Windows. Just after the bios,  Acronis runs and starts the cloning process. 

I then removed the faulty C drive and put the D drive (new C drive) into the normal C position and put my D audio drive back in. Everything worked flawlessly. I only had to re authorise two plug-ins on my system after doing this. One was Studio One and the other was my Korg Wavestation plug-in. Everything else worked without a hitch and nothing knew the process had taken place and everything just works perfectly now. Only I have a new and larger C drive.

Because this was so good and worked so well I believe it to be a far superior method of doing a total system backup especially if your OS gets messed up due to what ever reason and you have to revert back. I have never found system restore to be that great or reliable. Others seem to get it to work but it has never really worked for me. This works great.

M_Glenn_M


Thanks
That didn't do it so it's looking more and more like the HD
Good idea about getting just a HD..
It would certainly be easier tho if they could just mirror copy this one to the new one.
Can they do that?

Yes - I just did that with mine two weeks ago.  My hard drive was OK but I was reaching the limit.  So for a little over $100 I upgraded to a 7200rpm 750gb hard drive.  (I'd have gotten the 1tb but the drive wouldn't fit because it is double thick)  I had my IT professional do it for me, and he image copied it, so I didn't have to re-install anything.  Except for Trilian - they apparently copy the ID of the hard drive so I had to re-authorize.
 
You're going to want to do this fairly quickly before your drive starts having bad sectors.  If the files on your drive get messed up it may prevent a nice image copy, and then you will have to rebuild your system.  This has happened to me a few times over the years.   It's a lot of work, but it's not bad to do this every now and then.  You get a freshly built system out of it, and you will be forced to organize all your software which is a good thing.

It's happening tomorrow.
I got a SATA 7200 1T HD to replace the bad one and am adding a bit more RAM for good measure and having the IT guy do the cloning.
Thanks Guys, wish me luck. I miss my Sonar.

I can highly recommend cloning your system drive, (I did it with Acronis) worked for me very well, and has bought me some time, and extended the life of my Win XP system, until I can afford to buy the Win 7 64 bit I7 thing.

Plus, all the old Sonar projects can be accessed for years to come, on the system they were created on.

My IT son tells me it's a good idea too to hold off a year or so until Win 8 has proven itself and worked the bugs out.
Not looking fwd to reinstalling 15 years of programs and accumulated crap but it will be cleaner and probably run much much better.