Last night the hard drive on my work-issued laptop bit the big one. Yes, the sound of wind chimes emanating from a laptop is not a good thing. Thankfully I am a records manager that actually practices what I preach. All my documents and work files were saved to my personal network share or to our legal team network share. I did not loose anything important. New hard drive in place, I have been restoring my settings and fussing with other XP particulars off and on this morning. My laptop is an IBM Thinkpad about 3 years old. Our tech person told me that they are experiencing many hard drive crashes lately as 3 years is about the lifespan of one of these drives. I don't know if that's a typical lifespan for a well used hard drive in a laptop - I am guessing the answer is yes. So along the lines of hard drive destruction is hard drive preservation. I think it is prudent to back-up all data regularly. This is the first time I've ever had a crash like this in all the years I've had PC's. I assume I've been lucky. Rock on! Sharon Sharon Burnett Seattle Washington USA List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance