a tomsrtbt disk (or similar) handy to try to mount the disk and see if anything is still salvagable? I suspect trying to copy /home off will be a challenge. Good luck.

this is the point when I wish I didn't lend out my install disks....

I booted using tomsrtbt, and it seems my /home and /usr and /archive partitions are intact, just lost /bin, /sbin etc. In fact, the only thing on / is vmlinuz and lost+found! I highly reccommend having a tomsrtbt floppy/CD to anyone reading this.

So I have a custom kernel-image .deb that I've retrieved, meaning that when I get Debian reinstalled on it, I can get my USB cd-writer working, so I have full back up (and about 20 backup CD-rs!). Then I'll "keep an eye on it", until I save up enough to buy a new HD.

Thanks for the suggestions. Ricardo