Well, I got lucky.

[hobbit709]

Managed to get 7.5Gb data off customer's hard drive before it went completely. Took a lot of rereads and freeze spray to keep drive cool.
no one thinks about backups until they suddenly need one.

[BlueJazz]

1. Damn...I never thought about freeze spray. That's pretty cool. (excuse the pun)

Glad you were able to save your customers stuff.

[hobbit709]

2. I was even able to save their Mozilla profiles.

so when I put the new drive in, I can restore their original profiles and email.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

3. You should check sharper image...

...to see if they have a USB drive shaped like a wand.

Good work!

[ChromeFoundry]

4. Maybe you should think about adding another drive for RAID1?

Just a thought.

[hobbit709]

5. Old machine. Uses IDE drives, no SATA

I doubt the customer would even understand RAID.

[ChromeFoundry]

6. Surprised you were able to even find a PATA drive

glad you were able to scavenge their data.

Maybe now would be a good time to educate them about MTBF and the laws of Murphy.

[hobbit709]

7. They're not that hard to find

http://www.geeks.com/products_sc.asp?cat=423

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007603+600003441&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&IsNodeId=1&Subcategory=14&description=&hisInDesc=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&AdvancedSearch=1&srchInDesc=
among other places.