"Destroys laptop" is a little harsh, but it did destroy a partition on my hard drive, the one responsible for booting and running my OS, rendering it no longer useful.

The hard drive itself is still functional, and the partitions other than the first are still complete, but it is quite a mess. Hitting the magic button caused my PC, for some reason, to incorrectly or incompletely overwrite the first bit of the partition table. It was done in such a way that I can see the partitions on the hard drive, but I can't use them.

I've booted the PC with an Ubuntu LiveCD, but from a USB thumb-drive so it's fast. With the tools that come with it, I can see the partitions, and even mount them (except that first one). However, trying to edit the partition table to maintain the current partition (thankfully the one with all of my data on it), the incorrect or incomplete partition table that's there isn't allowing me to correct the problem.

I'm even OK-ish that the first partition got destroyed. It's untimely and frustrating, but accidents happen, and thankfully my other use protected me from other dangers. That first partition is there to be used to do hard upgrades of Ubuntu, allowing me to wipe that partition and reinstall everything, but maintain my data on the other partition. Normally, it's less than an hour's worth of work.

But if I can't, as I normally would, just tell the installer to recreate and format the first partition, and just use and mount the other partitions, I'm left with wiping the whole drive and starting over.

I've got the large (320GB) USB drive attached now, copying the contents of my data partition (again...it seems to be on that drive a few times...need to merge and reduce...see previous posts...), and when it's done, fresh install (and copy back).

Practice, right?