I just hate when that happens! All your hard work and effort gone.
You know, storing your data on an external server is the way to go: Free up your hard-drive space, data recovery, and timely data backups.
I'm involved with a small startup for scientists, by scientists that does exactly that.
Check us out at www.bioinfoman.com
or view our web demos: www.youtube.com/user/bioinfomanagement
Cheers!