so, let's see

My extremely kind coworker (I am going to owe him bigtime after this) extracted my hard disk from my computer's guts and took it off to analyse.

Verdict: it was a hard disk crash and at least some data has been lost. Treatment: he'll do what he can, save what data he can, and then reformat/reinstall it for me.

I can only hope that the important stuff (ie, writing) is still there, and kick myself for not doing more frequent backups.

I may have cause to be grateful that I tend to archive so much stuff on my website or on livejournal.

Oh well. See you all when I see you. Believe me, you could not be more annoyed than I am.