My story:
It was 2010, right after the olympics here...
1. Laptop suddenly beeps and says "No hard drive found!"
2. Try everything, rebooting, replugging the hard drive, etc.
3. We decided the hard drive (containing all of my stuff from 2008-2010) was burnt, so we ordered a new one.
4. Installs new one, same thing happens.
5. Old hard drive put somewhere (i know it's in my house).
6. Laptop put away.
7. Half a year later, new desktop.
8. A couple years later, decides to boot up my laptop for no reason.
10. Laptop WORKS, installing windows vista! (only have an upgrade key for Win7, hard drive totally empty).
11. A couple months later, install windows 8.
12. To this day, it is sitting on a cooler in a dusty cooler converting my dad's TV shows.
I REALLY wish I knew where my old hard drive is, it still has the OS and stuff along with all my precious memories.
Also ya, I have installed Ubuntu on it as a dual-boot for fun once, almost broke my BIOS.