Are Western Digital disks the worst, or is it just me?

vandermerwe wrote:
The question was asked with surprise that you do not seem to have realised the absolute necessity to have a backup strategy despite having gone through this twice before.

I was able to recover the data from another backup. I keep them in 2 countries, 3 cities in the US. I brought a set of disks with me from South America to the US, and a year later had a relative bringing another set, just in case the proverbial airplane crashed (or a substantially less dramatic lost luggage).

Another acquaintance came from the Caribbean and I told him: "send the paperwork via Fedex and the disks with you."

I still have one spare copy.

In any event, I found what I was looking for:

http://gearhead.netgear.com/Data_recovery.html