4 days ago my 60 Gig Hard Drive collapsed, 2 years and one month since I bought it - Seagate Brand.

Just spent an anxious weekend wondering how much of my Flight Sim would be recoverable, if any.   I had made a back-up of my aircraft/gauges a long time ago and that was about it.     The thought of all the add-ons
that could be history wasn't much fun - blue sky, water textures, Garrish Grey's trees plus about 200 MB's of Airports etc etc etc.

The good news was that with the help of a geeky mate,
a new HD was installed and we managed to clone everything back into it.     Nice to see that HD's have dropped in price, the new 60 Gig one cost me $220 New Zealand, or about $120 US or about 75 pound UK.

This crash came from no-where with no warnings.   Tomorrow I'll be doing a decent Back-up.

As an "old" computer guy..  the thing that keeps me utterly amazed is, the storage ability at our disposal. Not so much the size (well that too) but the reliability. Seriously,,, 100gig HDD's are common now  ... and the price (the going rate here in the US is about $1.10 / gig) are,, well ,,,  almost FREE !

ONE DOLLAR AND TEN CENTS PER GIGA-BYTE !!!!

My first HDD was 10 meg  (0.01 gig) and cost $300.00

That's $30,000.00 / gig !!!!!  (in 1983 dollars)