I can't seem to win this war. The war that is me and my stuff vs. the computer that craps out on me or gets zapped by some virus that my virus software didn't detect. The 1st time I lost my stuff I bought a zip drive to combat that danger thus saving any important info on a 100mb zip disk. That, of course, was a long time ago in the world of computers and I have since adopted a auxilliary hard drive connected by means of a USB cable capable of holding 40 gb of info. So, any computer issues that may have risen up in an attempt to ruin me have failed because all the important stuff has been kept safely tucked away on this seperate drive. UNTIL NOW. NOW THE F@#$%! thing is dead. I can't win. oh well. bye bye all you precious mp3's and model pictures, reviews, emails. etc, etc. username's password's the list goes on.

Alex,

I know there are companies out there that specialize in data recovery. I always heard nothing is ever really gone off of a hard drive unless it has actually been overwritten by something new. If you had irreplaceable data on the drive you may one to check into it.

It is an option in any case.
Sorry to hear about your troubles,
Shaun

Now Now Alex...you and I both know what was really on that drive...dont we :-) In all seriousness though. I feel your pain..

Good luck bud.
Bryan

:-) I'd be an outright liar if I said there wasn't, but it doesn't matter - it is just all those mp3's most of which, I accquied legally so that's alot of $$$ lost.

You might want to invest $$$ in a CD or DVD burner. Backing up data from one hard drive to another is risky as you can tell. Recordable CDs and DVDs are guaranteed to last at least 10 years so this may be a better way of making sure your important stuff is safe.

Take it in to a computer repair shop and see about data recovery. I know for a fact that even if the thing was on fire and stomped on you will be able to recover most if not all of it. might cost you a few bucks though.
HTH
Bryan

yeah it the $$$ in the cost of recovery that has me bummed, I'm sure it will suck. I never ever burned any c.d. in a pernament fashion so to speak. I kinda used that drive as my library and just made miscellaneous c.d.'s but in no way did it come close to the capacity. I "had" about 30gb's in mp3's

nope. Part are very old dl's back when Napster was not heard of by everybody and their lawyers - the rest were ripped off C.D.'s that I had bought and then sold. I get some off newsgroups though, but they are thoroughly scanned, etc. Mind you, this just happened & my computer is fine, in fact that last time I put anything on this removable hard drive was 2 weeks ago. It was working great until last night when it started making this awful clanking - clink, clank, clunk sound. :-)

Hey Vadster.

As what Phantom_Major said about installing Windows XP Professional, one thing I would like to point out is that I don't reccomend to install Service pack 2. It causes a lot of programs, including some of Microsoft's programs to run incorrectly or not at all. It also makes XPs firewall over-react to minor things, such as blocking you from playing games online, such as BF '42

Rob