now that i'm working with the clone instead of the original laptop hard drive, the recovery process is going much better! this is exactly why i wanted to get another drive and work off a clone--so that it could help answer the question, is the drive is ruined beyond repair, is it physically damaged/fried, etc. the recovery is almost 100% successful. perhaps 90%. somewhere in the 90s. so far, that's my conclusion. my address book was recovered successfully this time! iphoto files were recovered successfully this time! i just don't know about my entourage emails and my attachments in the program mail. (yeah, i run both email programs. each for a different domain. it helps to keep things organized.) honestly, the stuff that was in entourage is pretty much disposable. it doesn't hurt me if i were to completely lose that as long as i have my address book so that i have the email addresses of those i communicated with. however, it does hurt me a bit that i probably lost the attachments in mail. i had some cool things emailed to me that i never saved as a file outside of the email attachment. my bad. a few other files are labeled in red and this usually means that the file is corrupt and is no good. most of the files that this happened to are things that were either able to be recovered before (i think) or i have a copy somewhere (i think) or i can download again (i think) or that i'm not too hurt by losing (i hope).

the other big reason why i wanted to get another drive and make a clone was to figure out if the software is even worth it. since things are going so beautifully working with the clone, then i must say there were issues with the drive itself and the software is great! so i guess what i'm saying is, if you have a mac and were just so happy with it and lost your computer senses and were too lazy to backup your personal stuff, then ask yourself if your data is worth the price of the software or more. if it's worth less, then you probably aren't suffering too much from a complete data loss, are not addicted to computing, have not become post-human and rely on machines to assist you. if however you are like me and your data is worth more than the price of recovery software (it was $100), give prosoft's data rescue 2 a try. it's worth the price.