Thanks for the sympathy, I am feeling a bit sorry for myself just now.

I'm grateful for the way our police force is funded, nabbing backyard growers isn't a funding priority. I expect they will have photographed the plant and reported it, but seeing as it was growing in soil, there is no urgency to execute a warrant as the plant can't be moved to a new location.

PlantHeadJ, yeah they can, a reformat will only remove the obvious, but without the obvious, as Stinky said, it isn't worth the cost and I am ready for a reformat anyway. It's a semi regular event with old computers and small hdd's.

Connection speeds in Australia (unless you are on the main trunk out of Canberra) are abysmally slow, much too slow to surf via a proxy, but a nice idea.Thanks.

I'll be back after I'm satisfied the plods that I am not of interest to them. Some might call it over kill, but in 22 years of growing I have always followed my gut and destroyed crops that I suspected were compromised. In that time I have had one theft and no busts and that is how I want to keep it.