I'm back (well, the Mac is back)

A salutatory tale...  Simple message is to backup your machine.  I did.  I'm relatively happy.

I have just spent ten days without my Mac.  And when it came back, it was with a new HDD (OK, twice as big as the last one) but without ANY data from the old one.  I do back up occasionally.  Last backup was, according to my sticky on the backup disk, 12 Dec 07. Turned out to be 6 Jan 08.  Good message here... make sure that your sticky on your backup disk is accurate - otherwise you'll sweat unnecessarily.

When push came to shove, and I booted the Mac from the backup up disk, I could restore from the bootable backup in less than an hour.  End result is a complete Nik-machine with very little effort... even down to Firefox / Gmail 'remembering' my autofill password.  Now that's a backup!  I haven't had to reinstall any software at all. 

I have lost two weeks of photos (very very bad), and CV versions (not significant) and some other stuff...

I suggest you backup today, or feel good 'cos you do it anyway.