---

Well its not really 'sad', instead just annoying that I did not listen to the warning signs. I hope to recover everything and the images on the recently failed disk were all scans of slides and I still have the original sides. It is just that it will take a lot of work to do it all.

Interestingly when I was dismantling the computer last night to replace the disk I found it was full of a fine white dust, several months ago when I last opened it up it was clean. I wonder if this was the result of some of the late summer dust storms in the Sahara, I hear they have been sending plumes of material up to northern Europe - perhaps loads of biological aerial plankton (inc Diptera) came with it too?
Ha! see the post was about Diptera after all.