My Epson P2000 is now a $500 paper weight

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RappWizard

I purchased the Epson P2000 about 2 .5 years ago and it was always a very reliable portable storage device. I never lost a single image and took it with me on many trips. UNTIL LAST NIGHT! I had it connected to my Mac and I noticed my computer kept locking up on me as I was sorting through images on the P2000. Eventually I had to restart the computer and I got the dreaded "press reset" message on the P2000. After many attempts to reset, I started to hear a very unsettling sound from within the unit. Instead of the normal hardrive spinning sound from within the P2000, I started to hear a very abnormal clanking noise from within the P2000 which could be the harddrive but I'm not sure. Eventually, I couldn't even get any screen to come up on the unit, just a black screen.

Fortunately I have been able to recover most of my recent images from the CF cards that had been downloaded into the P2000 from an excellent data recovery software program that I bought a couple of years ago for $30. BUT, I'm curious as to whether its worth it to me go through that entire procedure of swapping out harddrives ( I found an instructional video from one of the threads on this Forum) or whether based on what I've described, could it be more than a defective harddrive? I'd of course still have to re-install the operating system on the new harddrive and the whole process looks pretty daunting ( to me anyway). Has anybody out there gone through this process. With CF cards being so cheap these days I'm thinking about writing off the P2000 and just buying a couple of extra 4 to 8 GB CF cards and in the future and just backing up my cards on a notebook when I'm on the road. Sending the P2000 into Epson would be cost prohibitive especially since I've had it for over 2 years and it would cost almost the price of a new one to repair it. Plus, I don't trust this unit any more. Yes, it has a very nice display screen but in lieu of its price there are much less expensive ways to back up images. Any input would be appreciated.