yeah.. all my important files and stuff are stored on a second drive - and all that data is backed up on my remote NAS (on-site and off-site.)
I didn't really lose anything, except for o/s settings & customizations - instead of re-installing Win 7, I broke down and finally installed Win 8 on the drive which I had just bought to upgrade my laptop. All is good now, just need to RMA the bad drive