Well, I think it's official. There's no getting my data back from my dead hard drive. Everything that I read about clicking hard drives seems to indicate that it's not impossible to get stuff back, but at what cost? If it's more than a couple hundred bucks, I don't think it's worth it.

What did I lose? Mostly some irreplaceable photos that I had not yet burned to DVD. I think we've got prints of most of them, but you know, it's tough not having the originals. I think we're losing the CoasterBuzz events, our Las Vegas photos (which are mostly from my cousin-in-law's wedding) and misc. dumb shit that is nevertheless important. Less important, I lost my collection of SuicideGirls nudies, various downloads of older software that was important, some old database backups that might have some stuff on them I can't replace, etc.

The good news is that about eight years of documents and e-mail are safe, because that's is automatically put up on IBackup.com. I pay out the ass for the amount of space I use there, but clearly it's worth it.

So what it comes down to, I suppose, is that I need to burn stuff I can't replace frequently. In the mean time, I've gotta format and start over. So much for a do-nothing weekend...