I don't know much about computers (especially the hardware), but I wish you luck in recovering your information. For the future, I highly recommend backing up your information and files. Two or three backups off your hard drive is recommended. If you want to pay for it, you can also find services via Google that will keep copies of your files on several hard drives, and they have major software to protect against viruses and hackers, so even if one or two machines go down, there's almost surely a machine that has your backups intact. Plus, like I said, you should make at least one or more copies on disks, DVDs, or other items on which you can make copies. Then you're safe.