Wrapping up that which has been a rather disagreeable week, I came home today (after having left work at around seven in the evening) to find my laptop hard drive has failed. At boot and throughout post, pressing my ear up against the bottom plate which holds the hard drive mounting bracket inside the chassis reveals the classic "whir, click, whir, click" of a drive gone bad.

Needless to say, I was furiously mad on my drive to dinner. The only thing that helped calm me down, besides my rather well-prepared Darden Cajun blackened mahi-mahi fish dinner with rice pilaf, was the knowledge that I had a backup copy of the files I would miss the most. Having just recently formatted my laptop, I conducted the customary LAN dump to a desktop system, but for some reason, did not delete it once I was back up and running on my laptop. And boy, am I glad for that.

I have decided I will attempt one temporary recovery solution I have learned about from several hardware focused sites and forums. The suggestion was to place the hard drive in a freezer for an hour or so, shrinking the metallic components of the drive unit and hopefully loosening-up and stickiness that may be causing the failure. I really have nothing to lose by trying. I do have some data that I would like to recover that was not in existence when my backup to the desktop was made, but nothing so significant to cause me suicide on failed revival.

So now I am left in a difficult situation that I must think about and act upon shortly. The big deal for me is replacement. Hard drives for my older system are expensive, so do I spend the $200 and get one for my computer, built in 1999, or do without a machine for a while and save up to buy a new notebook.

These questions and others will be pondered this weekend, during which I will be seeing the band Train at the House of Blues. With any luck, the place will not burn to the ground whilst I am inside.