[ficbot]

I don't know what it is about me and computers, they always seem to die at the two-year mark. My macbook has been slowing down a little, butnthey told me that absent a ram upgrade, it's specs werempretty good, so I didn't sweat it. Anyway, today I came home from a late meeting and did my usual email check. My system froze so I restarted it and only got a grey screen with a blinking folder. I googles this on the iPad (which I am using rig now) and it suggested booting off a system install disk. So I did this and two odd things: first of all there is a beeping sound from the DVD drive, and secondly it does not seem to detect the hard disk. When I go into the system utility it only lists the DVD drive.

So...how catastrophic is this? I have a mall gift card and I get a teacher discount so I am somewhat prepared to buy a new one (although I was not planning to just yet and am resenting this a little). And most of my stuff is in Dropbox. But is there any hope it can be fixed? At least enough to do a final check of my hard drive and make sure there are not more files to rescue?