Well, there had to be some bad in all of this good right? Must keep the universe balanced… My hard disk experienced a slow and merciless physical death yesterday. A funny noise (like a fan out of balance) and then BIOS not recognizing a primary master drive.
I’m not sure how extensive the damage is. While the noise was there, the drive still worked for about a day. I’ve since removed the disk (and am now using a copy of Knoppix that Dave Lane gave to me in NZ) so maybe after a small break, it will work again.
And, a shout out to LAClinux for responding quickly. They’re sending out a new disk for me to install (still under waranty!). And, they’ll try to do some data recovery. While my music has been backed up, my pictures since Australia haven’t (save for the low-res versions in the gallery).