The verdict

Dearest Liloo,

I have reached the end of the road with the hard drive. I am unable to communicate with it. It is making regular mechanical sounds which are not normal; I believe a piece of hardware inside the drive has failed.

I've only tried relatively basic things such as trying it in a couple of different computers (...) and trying to plug it into the hard drive caddy and use with two different laptops etc. The computers can see that there is a 160GB hard drive plugged into the system but cannot do anything with it.

With the data being as important as it is I think it's best one of the specialist companies with a lab have a look at it. There are more aggressive ways of trying to make it work but if they don't work it means that chances of recovery are lower.

I know it's no help but with hundreds and hundreds of computers at work I see a failed hard drive every week. It's a sad situation but happens to all hard drives at some point. I have had three fail on me.

Do you want the computer back and put together as it was or do you want it back without the hard drive inside it so you can do something with it?

So this is it. I can't believe I am through this again. Just over a year ago, the same thing happened and I can't take it anymore. This is truly heart breaking. I've lost so much stuff it's unreal: from halloween looks I was waiting to post for a while, tribute to my best friend recreating some of her looks, thousands of photos i took for the blog, hours and months of work all gone.  My computer is everything to me. I live on my own and I basically spend every hour i am not sleeping on it. The thought of proper blogging and posting reviews and so on is just beyond unimaginable. I've lost so much writing, and photos. It takes me for ever to take photos, it solely depends on sunny weekends and as you know they dont come often in england, despite the surreal weather we had to start October.

I got £300 left in the bank to finish the month, and this will be all gone if I choose the 'data recovery specialist route', some even charge £400 to do it. There is no even guarantee they retrieve stuff. Then add £400 to buy another pc and my bank won't let have a loan. London for towib2 is out of the question. Can someone tell @lbqblog about it cos I don't have the courage to let her down again. I am not going to make the #nin thing either, the newcastle thing as it seems very superfluous, when money is so tight. I am sorry ladyfromatramp (sp?)

Thank you you all so much for your all kind words fo support, love, hope and candles. It helped me through yesterday and today. Right now i cant hold the tears any longer. On the plus side, my boiler is now fixed, after three weeks of cold water. Here's the thing though, I couldnt care less about hot water, greggs pasties or halloween even, and that's my favourite day of the year. All I wanted was my little baby to be revived.

My head is pounding with so much crying. I am not sure what to do right now to make me feel better
I am not the kind person wh will do anything silly, you dont need to worry about that but right now I feel broken, totally broken.  Thank you for your support

xxx

liloo