I want to cry (laptop failure) [Resolved]

My laptop computer died on me last Friday, it's now only good for as a door stop. Lost everything on it, including my novel. I wanted to cry, until I found a disk that I had saved it on, and I felt relief. Well, I got a new computer yesterday and was finally able to open the disk tonight to see what was on it. It was the old version, not any of my rewrites. I so want to cry now...all that hard work down the shitter. I have chapters 1-3 saved in my email, but that's it. I have to start chapters 4-7 all over again from scratch. Ugh! I'm so mad at myself for not backing up my novel, and all my other stuff. I now have dropbox, so even if I don't back up as often as I should, dropbox will have it. So frustrating! Well...here we go again, hopefully I can remember some of what I wrote. I'll probably write real rough drafts first just to get it down, then go back and refine. A hard lesson learned, one you don't think will happen to you until it does, and then it's too late.

On the bright side, I'm loving my new computer, though the mouse pad sucks...I'm going to have to get a real mouse I think.

I think a drink or dozen would help!

I sure hope that what I come up with the second time around is better. It took me forever to write it the first time around. I'm a slooooow writer.

I don't know if that'll be possible, my friend, who's pretty smart with computers, said chances are slim to none that my hard drive, which bit the dust, would have any files on it to recover. I would have to take it to a computer shop to see if it's possible, but I just don't have the cash to see if any files can be extracted from it, at least right now with Christmas coming. But, I'm willing to listen to any advice you all may have.

I wrote this before seeing the newer replies...lol! What kind of cable are you talking about, Cyia? I still have the computer, but I don't know if it'll turn on still, I think it may, but that's as far as it goes.

Gosh I'm slow with my replies...he he he!

I'll have to see if there is one around here. Give me the details, and I'll give it a go tomorrow. I need to go to bed, didn't realize it has gotten so late.

I was on the internet when my computer froze. I was thinking, ok, give you a bit and you'll unfreeze yourself, but it didn't happen this time (it would periodically freeze up, then unfreeze, especially when the anti-virus would run). The blue screen of death appeared, but disappeared within a few seconds so I couldn't read what it said, and the screen went black. Then it acted like it was going to reboot, but then a black screen came up with mumbo jumbo I couldn't understand, but I remember it saying something about a cable? Well, the drive started making clanking noises, and it freaked me out, so I shut down the computer. I waited for a bit, turned it on, and the drive made worse clanking noises, a screen to choose a few F key options appeared, then another black screen, with words I can't remember flashing on and off, as the computer made more noises. I shut it off and left it alone, because I was afraid if I kept turning it on and off I would do more damage. So I called a friend to tell her what happened, because I was distraught and needed someone to talk to. And that's about all I remember. It happened so fast, and I was panicking, so I couldn't keep my self to remember all of which had happened.

When it was taken to our computer friend, he took out the hard drive and put in another one to see if the computer would run on a new drive, but when he tried installing Windows XP, it would download, but not open, then the blue screen of death would appear. So he thinks there must be a failure in the computer which caused the hard drive to fail too, some other component (he told me what it could be, but can't remember what he said it was)and now the computer itself is worthless.

So, that about sums it up, I hope that was enough information, because that's about all I can remember.