My money is on the power supply or battery, not the hard drive. You should be able to recover your data -- or at least have your local Geek Squad extract the data. I know I should back up my files more regularly than I do. I'd better put my latest oevre on a flash drive or risk losing it.

Have a great weekend, don't worry about the 'puter. I look forward to hearing about Summerfest and the bacon butties! What are those? We don't have them in the US.