The platter might be titanium if it is pretty new, but I'd be surprised. I wouldn't rule out aluminium, those platters aren't just cut out of a sheet of the stuff you'd find at HD! Flexibility doesn't even rule out glass, there are glass/ceramic mixes that have some flex. The platter absolutely won't be steel or tin. Aluminium is by far the most common material for thin film coatings. If the coating is shiny and not orange (rust-coloured) then it is the thin film type, a cobalt alloy with an overcoat. It should be very resistant to corrosion. It is actually magnetic (hard drive, duh!) but there is so little of it and it is arranged in such a way that you'll get almost no response to a magnet.

I've used spinrite to recover several drives that were in really bad shape. It's fairly expensive, but in one case, the PC would no longer boot and I didn't have a recent backup. I ran spinrite on it and got everything back (and immediately got a new drive). My wife's PC developed a bad spot on it and there were actually a few movies she had bought from itunes that no longer worked. I ran spinrite, recovered everything and replaced the drive. Notice that in both instances, I replaced the drive after using spinrite. Spinrite does a wonderful job of recovering data, but I just don't trust drives if they need Spinrite to get them to work. Besides, drives keep dropping in price, so it's usually possible to go to a much larger drive at the same time. If you can still boot and read from the drive, make a backup (I like creating images so I can restore if the drive goes completely bad). You'll need the imaging software even if you ever need Spinrite, anyway, but if you make regular backups, you shouldn't need to buy spinrite.

Lots of great help here. I used Tivo Desktop plus to transfer my recordings from the Tivo to the computer. Yes - I know the price of drives is getting low. In fact - I just bought a 500 GB hard drive to swap out in my series 2 Tivo. (Until I know I can do it right, I don't want to mess with my Series 3 and possibly screw it up and definitely void the warranty. Not all my shows are HD, so storing some of the series 2 is fine). My computer had nearly 400 GB of free space when I started transferring shows - and its' almost full now. So with my habits, even a 1TB external drive will get filled up. I may use one to store HD movies and things where the HD matters more. But recording sitcoms, American Idol and my daughter's kid shows doesn't require HD. So I need to get some of these shows off all hard drives since they'll be filling up and get some to DVD-RW disks (I'm assuming that in a couple of years my daughter won't want her Hannah Montana shows, etc). I looked at the computer's dvd player and it didn't say DL or dual layer. I have to figure out how to get to windows explorer and I'll doublecheck about writing dual density. I got the computer in Jan. 2008. I think I will need something like VideoReDo. Not sure if I'd still need DVD Shrink in that case or not. I'll check it out. Urlee - does your DVR also have a Tivo? I really like the Tivo. perhaps I should get a Tivo DVR with builtin DVD burner. That would simplify this whole process - but I think it would cost a lot for the unit and then again for Tivo Service. If I don't have a DL DVD burner in my computer, I wonder if it's worth getting one? Sure could help to get movies and 2 hours shows burned in one dVD. Thanks. Lynn.

since you have already done what you decided to do I would most definitely set her up as Administrator on the pc and set up a user name and hard password for the pc so that anyone there can not access it they would have to know her name and password to enter the pc. Other wise they can just sit at her pc and do anything and that leads to infections and she does not need that. Be sure you load some of the good free antivirus programs on it like AVAST which does work on 98 and malwarebytes free, make sure she knows how to update and run scans. I would also put spywareblaster free on there and show her how to hit the update button once a week on it and then hit the enable all protection no scans to run it just runs in the back ground. I would also install firefox on it and have her use that instead of IE.