Primary Hard Disk Failure

Last Friday my computer had a bit of a problem. At about 9:00 in the morning I was mid writing an email and my computer froze. No biggy, it's happened before. I tried to CTRL ALT DEL it to get the program manager up and find out which program wasnt responding. There was no response.
That had not happened before but, using my extensive computer knowledge, tried the old 'turn it off and back on again' trick. As it reset it stopped and said "Primary hard disk failure" and then "Insert system disk to continue". That wasnt so good.
I decided that my computer was just having a bad day so I turned it off for 5 minutes and made myself a coffee.
I came back and turned it back on. It just got to the windows loading page and then reset itself then tried again. This just went on for a few minutes and thought it was bad. Took my computer down the road to the computer guy and after he tried to get the info off without success informed me that basically all my stuff was gone.
Now, I dont really have a computer at home that is use very often because I dont have the net at home. So, apart from the obvious work stuff I had on there which is a whole world of pain, I also lost all of my personal stuff that I had accrued from the last 3 or so years of work here. As much as that is annoying, the most annoying thing is that I also lost all of my emails that people had sent me. Subsequently I have lost most people's email addresses.
So, if you're a buddy of Stu and have my email, I dont have yours! If you could send me a one line email (or more if you are inclined) so that I have your address again.
I'll be backing up more in the future methinks...