Crash and Burn

Sorry once again for my absence but I've run into a bit of a disaster, at least as far as high-tech modern life goes - my computer hard drive (HD) crashed, which, for anyone who owns a computer, is your worst nightmare. It's one of those things that happens to “other people” but not to me! The crazy thing is that I was using it the night before and the next morning the darn thing wouldn't boot up. I could turn it on but and the booting process would stall about 75% of the way in and then the computer would just shut down.

I took it into the repair center and they did a quick diagnostic and said at first glance it seems to be a HD problem. They wouldn't know for sure until they opened it up, but in the meantime I should consider my options, which would be to try and repair the HD, replace it, or get a new computer. Replacing the HD was the cheapest and actually most desirable option because my HD was old and ran slowly. In fact, the guy at the shop said if this was the original HD on the computer than I probably got my money's worth out of it. The implication was that my computer is as old as the hills, which I can't really argue with. Buying a new computer would have cost me about $1000, which would have been painful, if not intolerable, but it would have been nice.

I decided to go with the new hard drive, and opted for a high-tech solid state drive, or SSD. More on this later. It took them a few days to get the drive, which came in last Friday, and then a few days to put the thing in. During that time I was without a computer, though I had my daughter's school laptop that they lent to her. I didn't want to get too involved with school property, and it was a PC that had been severely limited in terms of applications and web usage, for good reason. It didn't have any word processing software and instead employed Google docs, which is usable but a little more tedious. Besides, everything you do is under the auspices of Google, so instead I decided to just wait it out and get my computer back. I took it in on Tuesday and they got it back to me yesterday. Boy was I stoked.

Now my computer is back but I've lost almost everything in terms of software because of the crash. Thankfully most of my data has been backed up, albeit incorrectly (more on this later, too), but I need to go back and retrieve all the programs.

It's been quite an ordeal but as always there is a good story to go along with it. To add to the fun I had a take my car into the shop, as well, but that, like many things in my life, is a story for another time.

--> Until then, thanks for reading, and thanks to AZ Laptop Medic for the pic.