Wow, so I went out and did two nights worth of searching adn searching on the net, and theorized that my external drive was really just having a power issue. So as it turns out, after I opened it it, it turned out to be an internal hard drive in just what is the equivalent of an external hard drive casing.

Unfortunately, my hard drive is from another era it seems, and the interface is outdated. (My new machine uses a serial ATA adapter. My hard drive an IDE.) Any hoo, ,ade a 30 mile round trip up to Fry's in Duluth in torrential rains and bought a USB 2/IDE-SATA adapter for 24.99.

Plugged it in and WHOA. Hard drive is perfectly fine. Even so, I'm copying my pictures and emails over right now .

I feel enormously relieved. Now I feel like I can back up stuff that I should have backed up (shame on me) and retrieve some files that I hadn't yet had a chance to print/send in for prints for anime expo.


Also, I didn't have to shell out 100 for the diagnostic, plus another 300-900 for a retrieval of data D: Thank goodness. DDDD:::

Anyways, YAY. RAAR. NOW BACK TO WORK and if you're reading this. Go. Back. Up. Your . Data. Now.