Here’s another case where you will be glad to have external backups.

I read of a case recently where someone took their laptop into be serviced for a loose hinge.  During the repair the service company apparently replaced the hard drive because it was ‘defective’. The laptop owner was not aware of this until they got the laptop back and all their data was gone.  And they had no backups.

The last paragraph from the article sums it up. From http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2009/07/30/computer-repair-horror-stories-backup-your-hard-disk/

What is important about the article is that these folks gave their systems over to a repair facility without backing up their hard drives. Your computer could be stolen in transit, lost at the repair facility, damaged beyond repair and the list goes on. It doesn’t matter who the repair folks are or the reason for replacing a hard disk. What is important is that you need to back up your stuff.