That is what my main hard drive on my home machine decided to do yesterday during the World Cup Semi-Final … I went in to my G5 to retrieve a file to review while I watched the game and what I got was heartburn.  The drive icon was there and I double clicked it to get it to open up and the little spinning beach ball cursor told me something was wrong.  Kept waiting, nothing … a little longer, nothing.  I had to do an emergency restart and waited … this time no drive icon.  Nothing would mount the drive and I knew it was really bad when it started beeping.  I tried it on my MacBook and for a brief moment it showed up on the desktop but then went away.  Now all I get is rapid beeping from the enclosure when I plug it in.

So I held my breathe, cleared off enough space on another drive to attempt a restore, and went for it.  After making space for 180 GB of photos, music, tax documents, personal items, consulting documentation, grad school work, my wife’s PhD work, and so much more Backup started to restore the files to my desktop.  It took a couple of hours, but everything is there!  Absolutely amazing … it worked!  So as I type this I am backing up my MacBook and building a new strategy with more drives to protect my digital life.  I am taking a new 300 GB drive home tonight and probably going to buy another one to make sure my prized digital assets are protected.

Now, what the hell do I do with the crashed drive?  Do you just throw that away?