My computer died late last year and I had to replace my hard drive among other components. Logged into GD for the first time since and all of my characters/stash is gone. no hope for restoring it? I’m guessing i should have backed it up?
the only things i’m really salty about are the components
Welcome to the forum. 
Depends if you were using cloud saving or local. If the latter then yes, they’re gone if you haven’t backed them up. If on the cloud then it may be possible to find them again.
That’s why I keep the save on my mobile and also have a backup of the mobile and the hard drive on an external hard drive. So unless all three explode at the same time, my GD progress is safe.
If you haven’t had steam cloud on (which I personally don’t use and don’t recommend using) then yes, you lost them for good, unless you made a backup on some external drive.
Don’t be discouraged though! Starting from scratch is an interesting experience.
I had cloud save on but apparently its got no data there.
Oh Well, guess its as good a time as any to try out Reign Of Terror
Since the last patch components drop completed, and the drop rate is as high as for the fragments. Might work differently for modded games. But playing the regular game you should be able to stock up quickly.
You could try this
I am presuming that i didn’t have cloud save on before my pc die, and my new download had it on as default, hence no saves.
tried Reign Of Terror, wasn’t too keen, the areas just felt too big with little direction in the quest notes.
So i blitzed a1 and jumped into Forgotten Gods, the components are definitely flowing (L36 currently) and really enjoying it, as i’d only just started FG when my PC died (literally I was playing Grim Dawn, got hit by a powersurge that fried several components) so I had PC related PTSD for a while with respect to grim dawn
I keep a backup at my google drive do that next time so you don’t loose any or you only loose only a little