The day my harddisk crashed

Just happened to chance upon the blog site and registered myself.
Trying to restore my pc after one of my *IBM* harddisk crashed.

There's pretty slim chance of me retrieving my data from the
harddisk. All my precious lecture audios as well as trip pictures
are gone with the wind.

Worst is my data backup on my portable harddisk seem to be
giving me the problem. Can't recognise by my pc, and was shown
as a unformatted harddisk partition. Dread the time I have to
press the key to format the portable harddisk, in case one fine
time it data just happened to appear.

Another ultimate thing is that I called the support center at IBM/Hitachi
they allows only return at Changi during weekday. How am I suppose to
bring the harddisk down for a replacement? Most probably I have to get
a courier company to do the sending for me.