LINUX ROCKS
The knocking noises from the hard disk were indeed its death throes, and eventually response became treacle.

A reboot came back with a message that there was no filesystem to boot from

Then a reboot came back with no hard disk found - check cable.

Then the disk made a few knocking noises and went quiet.



Panic ye not.

Chat with Bob, who looked up how to spring the discs from these machines, success, so an item for the shopping list tomorrow

Dig out a live DVD of Ubuntu 8.10

Post into the drive

post USB stick in the back

plug into the router

Here we are back in business.

The nice to have stuff, (some photos and music) are no more, but everything which is important, my notes for a course I give in three weeks time, my records etc are all there on the stick, we can carry on as if nothing happened.

Also I hear that one of the Linux mags has a more recent UBUNTU release on the cover disk.


No I wont be going to Windows 7. Too many business continuity and disaster recovery issues.