I lose everything all the time, comes of working with a crap OS :) The one thing I do recommend is installing a second OS capable of reading whatever drive format you're using, (I can recommend BeOS) That way if your OS dies you can still get your data back by boot the other OS. This makes sense when you realise that most "recovery" software wont allow you to write to the drive you're trying to salvage. Cheers Ron, your posts are always good for a laugh :) later jb