Saved by a Time Machine...

In the last 4 months I have had the good fortune of twice having my hard drive crash on me on my Macbook Pro. The first time I lost of bunch of stuff but was lucky to be able to recover some data off of various other machines. This last time I was saved by Time Machine. I'll be taking my computer to the apple store tonight for another hard drive replacement but I already have access to all my files. I just connected my backup drive to my wife's mac and clicked the time machine button. Selected use previous configuration, and I was able to recover some of the directories and files I needed to her machine. It was very simple and effective. So for those of you who have had lousy backup experiences and have given up. I recommend giving it another try with time machine. It bailed me out this time.