Satellite 1400 - Dead CD Drive

I hire-purchased a Satellite 1400 about 18 months ago, and as it goes not long after I purchased the notebook outright the CD-Rom died.

I had installed Gentoo Linux on the machine to do some development work, and wanted to reinstall XP Pro from the recovery disk when the CD went. So now I'm stuck without the graphics and web editing software my business is dependant on. I've tried reinstalling over a network, and the recovery disk won't do it - neither will it work with an external CD drive. The only option I've been told to be a slim possibility is using a 512mb+ compact flash card, but I don't have one nor do I want to purchase one just for this purpose.

I was quoted ~$400 AUD for a replacement drive from Toshiba. I'm just wondering if anyone knows if drives can be purchased anywhere (online) cheaper. I'm also wondering if anyone else has had this problem with the 1400 and if there are any other solutions than paying extreme amounts for a replacement drive.

Many thanks!

 

What you can try is using a network connection and copy all the files onto your HDD. You should be able to install the OS directly from the HDD. I think you just need to boot off a 98 Boot Disk and run setup from the XP folder.

-Vb-