Update 1: Installing Ubuntu…

Wow. I just f*cked myself.

I made sure all my stuff on my HDD was backed up to my external Firewire drive, including the Windows XP (32-bit) VM that I had moved all my data to.

I added my second 300GB HDD to my PC and configured a RAID 1 (Mirroring) array.

I then started the Ubuntu install, and was having trouble (as of this writing, still having trouble) with Ubuntu not seeing my RAID array. For some reason, I didn’t unplug my Firewire drive… And when it told me it found a 300GB drive, I just assumed it was the RAID array… and told it to go ahead and remove the partition and format. When I saw the red light on my Firewire drive blink my heart sank. So at this point I can’t install Ubuntu and I think I lost all my data (photos being the most important thing, my Quicken data is on the network, I’m sure.)

Damn.