Fixed. Sort of.

Well, I took the dodgy drive to Westcom in Workington, told them it was urgent, and returned home. About an hour later I received a phone call to tell me it was ready for collection - it was the container holding the drive that had failed, rather than the drive itself. This was more or less what I thought was the matter, so I was very happy, and returned later in the afternoon to collect it.

Plugging it in to my computer, though, I found it still not working, though the computer detected an MTP device (MTP - music transfer protocol - isn't that something like an MP3 player, rather than a hard drive?). Whatever it is, I was informed that it was installed, but wasn't working properly. Oh, great. Tried all sorts of things but nothing happened. Finally I took it to Steve's computer, where it worked perfectly well. Well, at least I know my files are safe and sound . . . I just can't get at them. Used Steve's computer to make 2 DVDs' worth of copies of the stuff I can't do without, but there aren't enough DVDs in the world (well, that's a complete lie, of course. But there probably aren't enough in our house) to copy all my photos and mp3s and stuff so they'll just have to languish for now, unaccessed but safe, until I get my stupid PC to recognise the drive. At least I can get on with some work.

Did I mention that my computer is seriously f***ed up?

Heigh.
Ho.