In response to my last entry the good news is 90% of my pics are safe. All it took was an old hard disk from E-bay, £10 and a small screwdriver and i sorted it. problem now is those final 10% are stuck on the hard disk and can't be got at at the moment as it's decided to corrupt itself. Hopefully this will be sortable, but if not only a small amount of work lost, so it aint all bad.