That explains the nice rubbery surround on most new Seagate hard disks...

Disk has now been sent to a firm in Sydney who specialises in this kind of repair. $64 and one week will buy me a prognosis on what it will cost to get some of the data off the drive. We shall see.

If I could stress this more, I would: MAKE BACKUPS! These days, with a host of different remote copy software available - use rsync, even! - secure remote access and relatively big pipes, there's no excuse to not find a friend and have a backup-swapping arrangement. Put it in your crontab as a regular job and you'll never have to worry again. I hope I'm preaching to the converted here...

Have fun,

Paul