definately a new machine is in order for you. but why not build your own?
just to point out, the fact that your hard drives were breaking so regularly, odds are on that your power supply was faulty. hard drives usually last for many years, if they are of decent quality. my advice is get western digital, samsung, or seagate hard drives. for cpu, look into getting one of the newer intel dual cores. for RAM, look into getting some corsair twinx. at least a gig of it. graphics card of course should be nvidia. probably 8600 series. and dont skimp on power supply. get a good antec power supply and the like.
if you dont want to build your own, look into getting a base unit with no operating system on it, and put your old xp on it. you will get more bang for your buck from xp. all in all, you can build a good machine with above specs for under a grand (euro)