Finally...

[The Man]

If your hard drive dies (read: dies, not "you accidentally formatted it" or "pulled out the IDE cable while the computron was running" ) put it in the freezer for a couple of hours, and odds are it will be fine long enough to recover a fair bit of data from.

I wish I had known that last year

[starseeker]

My younger brother crashed the computer over Xmas, Windows wouldn't run at all so the drive had to be completely reformatted. I lost all my work, and more importantly some pics I needed for coursework, and all my game files from the Sims 2 which I spent ages playing. The only stuff that survived was my music collection which I'd copied onto my mp3 player. I still haven't been able to install everything on yet, I have to ask permission from my dad to do anything, so unfair.
The other computer we have is being very unreliable, its suffering from old age so we're getting a new one. The longest any of our computers lived for was 11 years give or take and it has the processing power of a GBA (it was bought in '89) They don't make computers like they used to anymore, they're not expected to live more than 5 years without being replaced.

[Twisted Tinkerbell]

We had to reformat my computer a few times last year before it was all finally sorted out. It was finally fixed just before I felt the need to rip all my hair out and jump up and down on the computer. I was lucky, I didn't lose any of my pics or my music.

[Leeza]

I've had a couple of hard drives die on me. However, after my first one died and I lost all of my music, pics, etc., I started to back everything up onto discs on a regular basis. So when my last hard drive died I didn't have to cry at all.

Kishi, I have right clicked on some of your stuff. I'll post them there as I find them. My filing system stinks.