For future reference, everyone ought to get one of these:
Linksys.com – Products/Wired/Basic Networking/Network Storage/NSLU2 and a couple of USB drives. Network it to your computer, preferably from another room in case of fire, flood or act of non-existent deity and set the internal back-up on. If you copy all your stuff from your hard disk to 'the slug' on a regular basis, you then have three copies of everything; one on your computer and two on the network disks.
Of course, if you're old, cynical and pesimistic like wot I am, you also copy everything to your lap-top in case the entire house burns down.
I sincerely hope you can recover your files, Summerleft.