Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

I did a really dumb thing.

Yesterday my backup failed, because of a device I/O error. I assumed (really badly) that the error was on the backup drive, and so proceeded to reformat it - losing all my backups in the process. My logic was that after I had reformated it I would try and run a fresh backup and if it failed again I would replace the disk.
It failed again, but this time I realised it was not the backup drive that was at fault, but one of the drives it was trying to backup.
I realised this because it was the drive that had all our music on it, and I was having trouble playing music, followed by even more trouble browsing the drive.
I should have been a bit smarter. This was the last of three disks that I bought all in one go from one shipment, same size and model, all 500GB Western Digital drives (I know, I know - WD are crap). The other two had failed within the last 3 months and been replaced. I just hadn't gotten around to transferring the data off this disk.
It is unrecoverable. I have lost all the music - though of course I have all the cds and can rip it again. The downloaded stuff is gone, so I guess we will have to start again there. However, I have also lost all the videos we ever took of the kids using the video camera. Fortunately this is not a lot, but there were some pretty cool memories in there. Most of the video we take is done with the digital camera or a phone camera and this is all backed up separately and also archived to DVD / CD.
But... I should have taken more time before summarily formatting a drive. At leaat it is still under warranty and I shall get a new drive next week.
Lesson learned - and for everybody else out there - backup your data!

On the good side, I have taken the time to rebuild my main PC (working through the night). I now have two 10,000RPM 74GB Raptor drives striped together as system disk, and I have installed Vista 64 on it. SO far it is mostly going smoothly, though I did get into a startup loop BSOD this morning. I recovered using the install DVD and it seems to be OK again, though I shall take more system restore points as I go from now on.
I have a lot of applications to reintall, however my main productivity tools are all on and working.