This is where a rescue CD would come in handy...

I just lost ~$100 worth of music. Not to mention a crapload of other files. How did this happen? Well, the desktop system I use for gaming kept crashing during the Windows boot sequence, so my folks decided to send it in for repairs. It came back a day later (that would be today...) minus everything. I guess he took a certain adage to heart: "The quickest route to a computer's heart is through a strong electromagnet." All the files were gone. The HD had been reformatted, and Windows XP reinstalled over it. I could describe it more emotionally, but it would have to be censored. Heavily.
Now, what did the n00b-masquerading-as-a-pro do wrong? He forgot to back everything up before reformatting it. Sure, he couldn't access the files from the Windows boot, but there was a perfectly good Mandriva partition available... I take it he thought himself above that. Not so, the damned luser! I'm getting the LART out now. There's no idiot stupid enough not to be smartened up a bit with a Cat-5-o'-Nine-Tails. Anyways, Mandriva, the developers being to dumb to include it without Gael Duval, lacks support for reading NTFS drives. But guess what?
Knoppix can. So can a crapload of other live-CD distros.
So really, this guy had no excuse. Live CDs like Knoppix are free, and are more than adequate for backing up files. Pop a Xubuntu disk into the drive, plug in the media, and copy away. There's a reason why they call these "rescue disks"...
Moral of this story: Linux users are more competent than people who haven't heard of it. If you're in the computer-repair business: learn from this poor old jerk's example, and GET A COPY OF KNOPPIX! Dammit, what are you waiting for?!
EDIT: Sorry for the strong language. Well, the files are all intact, but almost everything had to be reinstalled.