I have the utmost sympathy for you losing everything on your hard drive - exactly the same thing happened to me last September. :cry:
Mike.
Happened to me not so long back and I had to ask friends to send me any photos that I'd sent them so at least I got some back.
On the plus side it also got rid of all the junk on my pc and it's running a lot better now.
I know this is a bit of 'after the horse has bolted' butif some good comes from your misfortune
Please get inot the habit of backing up any information, letters photos etc.
Just think what you data you cannot, would not , want to lose and make a copy onto a re writable CD.
in my line of business i have lost count to the number 0f people who have ended up in the same situation.
How can you lose your hard drive? Isn't it screwed into the PC in the first place? Even if you did have a cold you shouldn't be taking things out and hiding them. :doh:
I've never backed anything up as I think it is a waste of time. Especially when there are so many different ways of recovering the data so I feel it is not needed. Mind you I do have a blind sense of security for the stability of my hard drive. I can't see it failing any time soon and by the time it does I will have a newer and better SATA drive anyway.
If you must go down the backing up data route then create an image of your hard drive after a fresh install and always keep that to one side on a CD/DVD. Then all of your documents, pictures, movies, mp3s, favourites and internet settings can be saved onto a seperate rewritable CD and updated whenever you want.
I have not had this happen to me yet but I did have a lot of problems with an operating system, which affected my CD burner, which meant that I lost a load of stuff I thought I had safely backed up. Oh, and I had a dodgy load of blank CDs which didn't help matters! Anyway, much of the stuff I have on my HD is stuff that I don't want the local PC World boys having a look through as they attempt to recover my data! I don't mind sharing some of that stuff with you people, but not PC World! So to cover myself against drive failure or operating system failure I have bought another HDD and use it as a backup drive. The chances of losing tow HDDs at the same time are low and it gives me extra space for video editing etc. Not too expensive to buy nor difficult to install (I am fairly familiar with computers but not and IT whiz).
H
as is windows 98 sometimes oddly, especially comsidering how often that used to die!
It wiped the drive and rendered the whole thing completely useless. Wouldn't reload the system, buggered the HD. It's times like these I am so glad I paid for the 3 years cover on it, it took a week to get fixed and came home with a brand new HD. 