Just when you really don't need it - though when do you? there's computer troubles.

Yesterday afternoon, my email programme crashed and complained about a faulty database... and the HDD that said database resides on started making noises. Now... any noise coming from an HDD that is usually quite quiet definitely falls under "that is not a good sound".

And indeed it wasn't. I did try repairing the drive (no luck), scanning and recovering data (also no luck, the programme crashed while trying to recover things, and probably that happened because of Final Death of the drive), and a few other options - all to no avail.

A replacement drive was ordered at night, and then I can do a last try to get the data on the drive. And now, I guess, I will find out how well my backup solution has worked...