I'm surprised he didn't do that, especially as he suggested same when it first happened.
Interesting what you say about the file system, I may not have cottoned on to that. I should have, it's how I came by my third laptop. I was given it when I rescued some pictures from it here last summer using Ubuntu. It was kind of frustrating, because when I'd got the thousands of photos (no other copies anywhere) off, I put my Vista discs in that I made for my original Sony OS and it was fixed in a trice. Still, she's got them all - with backups in OZ.
I'm pulling data off the little Seagate USB drive as I type, so should be fairly safe now. Just can't find the latest data - having copied dozens of photos of old Colchester from the Colchester old Farts Faceboook thing. Wonderful shots some of them, but very time-consuming pulling them out of that site.
I guess that's it, unless I can get a PCB for that drive. I'll keep it just in case.
Thanks folks. Just a quick look back at life before I go to bed on the ones I've recovered. Life seemed simpler then.