Hard drive death is a terrible, terrible thing.

My hard drive on my personal machine recently died. The problem with this is I've been using this machine as my main workhorse for the past 12 months, and despite good intentions to back up, good intentions have repeatedly failed to materialise. This means, realistically speaking, if I do nothing, I've lost 12 months of my electronic life....

That's photographs, that's reasoned discussions, that's hope and joy, and sadness & regret. That's useful things, fun things, pure imagination gone wild and serious, important things. All, quite possibly, gone forever. I'm currently looking at data recovery firms, but they don't look cheap. Quite frankly I think it's looking like it would have been cheaper to buy a few drives, and regularly back up on a rotating basis.

But as I say - would've, could've, should've - didn't. So now my hopes are with data recovery firms. How much hope I have, I don't know. However, given the drive goes "click-click-click-click pause" 6-8 times, then goes "click", and is then silent, I suspect the drive is trying to start up and can't for some reason. I'm hoping this is recoverable.

Wish me luck... :-/

And yes, I am now backing up things...(!)