I lost EVERYTHING : (

Would recommend two hard drives and Powerquest Drive Image. I back up about once a month for the whole drive. I keep all my files on a seperate partition and copy that across to the other drive frequently, with a copy of my Outlook.pst. I've also keep that lot copied onto CDRW regularly and I've also got a hard copy of my drive on CDR. After a major crash it would take 30-40 mins of copying to be back where I was.

Sounds like overkill, but once you've lost everything the term 'never again' springs to mind. I lost mine about 18months ago - the usual stuff like all my walls, skins etc, plus a huge movie collection, gigs of astro photos, about 250 UT maps etc...

The only thing you can rely on with a hard drive is failure, it's not 'if' but 'when'. Hope you get everything back soon.

I run two OS drives in removable caddies....primary and secondary masters, with a data drive separate [Promise expansion card].
OS drive crash and I'm up and running in the time it takes to boot XP...[about a week]... All I need do is pull out the 'dud' caddy..

Experience is the best teacher.
You'll find you will never lose your system like that ever again....

If loosing data from a hard drive has you bummed, then the best thing to do is talk about it with someone.

There are many organizations that help with coping with a loss.

the data collected on a hard drive is in effect a part of your lifes experience. loosing that is similiar to loosing a part of yourself.

Can it be replaced? some can but the data most important more than likely can not.

hehe, i dont backup once a month, but once a half year i reinstall my computer, no offence, but things like lite step and other mess up your system, dont even have a "my computer" icon anymore... it is that wb and cursor xp dasn work on unix but if it did, windows was OUT!