Thank the merciful lord in heaven that I ghosted my entire hard drive a few nights ago before installing Windows XP SP2. It was also pretty brilliant foresight that last weekend I decided to spend the time and back up all my digital photos to CD.

A few minutes ago, I heard this weird vibration/grinding noise coming from my laptop (which is only since January old) I thought maybe it was the fan, so I flipped it over and the fan was still spinning. I put it back on the desk, and the grinding slowed and then stopped. Then I got a Windows Blue Screen Of Death. I shut down the machine and powered it back on. When I should have heard/sensed the hard drive spinning up, instead I heard that grinding sound again. BEEP BEEP Primary Hard Disk 0 not found.

Dead. Dead Dead Dead Dead Dead. I've got a support ticket generated with Dell already, so hopefully they can get me a replacement drive lickety-split. The only photos that I lost were the ones I just took yesterday, and aside from the one in the last post, they all sucked anyway.