> If your hard drive is truly dead, the device will do
> no good. But sometimes a hard drive will partially
> fail - it may be no longer bootable, but most of the
> data will still be good.

I've had to deal with bad hard drives twice.  Once, I had complete success
for a relatively small price.  Once I had only limited success at a
considerably higher price.

The low price success was with a desktop computer and a hard drive that
would no longer boot.  My solution was to purchase a new hard drive and, in
the process, to upgrade my operating system.  I installed the new hard drive
in the same computer and reconfigured it to be my primary, and bootable,
drive.  I loaded the new software and used it to reference and copy all the
data from the old one.  When I had everything I was interested in, I
reformatted the old drive and continued using it as secondary storage until
I eventually replaced that computer.

The high price, limited success, was when the hard drive in my old notebook
computer crashed during a trip to Cozumel.  The notebook hard drive not only
would not boot, the data was corrupted.  I, or more specifically, the
government, paid a specialty company $2,600 trying to recover one particular
file.  While I knew the value of backup, like many, I got complacent.  At
the time, my office did not provide sufficient mass storage for efficient
backup.  Backups took a lot of time and a lot of 1.4 meg floppy disks.
Since I knew I was going to replace the notebook within a week of my return
from Cozumel, I rationalized not backing up before I left.  Big mistake.  I
got about 80% of the file back.  It was enough for me to recreate most of it
from hard copies of old versions and by repeating some of the research that
went into the original.  Recreation time was more expensive than the
recovery time, but it was an important document.  The final product was not
as good as the original, but was good enough.  Several indictments and
convictions resulted and a multi billion dollar financial instution was
closed.  The cost and time was worth it.  Backing up would have been a much
better, and cheaper, option.

At any rate, I would certainly try the relatively inexpensive method again.
Since some of today's notebook computers will take a second hard drive.  If
mine would, I'd try that.  As somebody else mentioned, I'd also try a
housing to make my original hard drive work as an external drive.  I would
not consider the second, more expensive option unless the information on the
drive was very important and very difficult to recreate.  The cost and
limited success is not, in my mind, a good balance unless the information is
very important.

Since the government finally got around to providing suitable backup
devices, 20 gig Arc Drives, I'm a lot better about backing my data up
regularly.

> It certainly makes an excellent backup device. You can
> buy them complete with hard drive at most of the
> computer stores. USB 2.0 external hard drives are
> frequently advertised at CompUSA, Circuit City, etc.

Not only that, but since you're buying the drive, you can get the OEM price
on an upgrade operating system, something my Arc Drive does not provide.  I
think I'll give your suggestion a try.  It turns out that the XP Pro
software one my personal Notebook computer is pirated.  It was on the
computer when I bought it refurbished.  Even microsoft didn't know for a
couple of years after I bought it.  At any rate, when Microsoft determined
that the product key for my software was being pirated, they stopped
updating the software.  I'd like to replace the software with a legitimate
version but would rather not be cheated twice by paying the full, non OEM
price for it.

Lee