Blue Used To Be My Favorite Color

A few weeks ago I turned on my computer and nothing happened. Except for a blue screen. I don't know a lot about computers but I do know that a blue screen is not good. In fact, I believe it is actually bad. So I packed up my laptop and headed for the Apple Store. My friendly neighborhood Genius told me it was the hard drive-which I had pretty much figured out already. As tears filled my eyes--because, of course, nothing was backed up--he handed me a sheet of recommended local sources to try to recover my data. I took my injured laptop to one of them. The good news was that the hard drive was under warranty. The bad news was that Apple couldn't locate a replacement hard drive. (Isn't that sort of like McDonald's running out of french fries?) The better news was that Apple was going to replace my entire computer with a newer, better model. The next bad news was that they kept my computer for a couple of weeks and then told me they were able to recover nothing from my hard drive. So I then sent the hard drive to an even better data recovery company with a "clean room"--whatever that is--in the hopes that my 2 years of photos, emails, bookmarks, tax info and whatever else I can't remember could be recovered. I got the call today. My data is not recoverable. I feel like I have lost an arm. So if you are reading this and haven't backed up your data--back away from your computer slooooowly--and go buy an external hard drive. And learn how to use it. If I can help just one of you out there in cyberspace then my loss will not have been in vain. That's the kind I am--always concerned with others. Just trying to help.