Got this e-mail from my eldest brother who is a techno-geek and found out that even he isn't immune from the electronic plague. Read on. Might be helpful to some, amusing for others.
In the past two weeks we have experienced two technology catastrophic events when it comes to computers. The first was the sudden death of Dees laptop hard drive. A three year old laptop with a 60 Gig drive gave up its electrons without warning except for a momentary high shrill sound just before the screen went blank with a small flashing cursor. Well dont worry I have a one year old 500 Gig WD network hard drive that I was patting myself on the back for being soooo wise in buying and installing. Uh, what the ***^&#@! the hard drive is dead!
Now here are some additional lessons I think you should consider when you are loading up your drives with kids photos, important scanned documents, e-mail, music, that kind of stuff. These are:
1. 1. Quote the Texas multi-millionaire Ross Perot to yourself everytime you go out and buy stuff (especially computers) and remember things break!
2. 2. Even with a centralized backup system, back up the backup, stripe hard drives, and make CDs or better still data DVDs and store extra copies of your stuff everywhere. Lucky for me, I do have several hard drives and CDs and a few DVDs full of family photos. Except they are all here and I need to ship some out to family and friends.
3. 3. Very important if you decide (like I did) to send out the dead laptop hard drive to a forensic specialist to recover e-mail, documents, and stuff, take a moment extra to physically inspect the hard drive. You see, on Toshibas, Dells, and several other brands of laptops have A SMALL HARD DRIVE TO COMPUTER CONNECTOR YOU MIGHT OVERLOOK LIKE I DID. Sorry . I did not mean to shout. Without this small connector (see http://laptopupgrade.stores.yahoo.net/hpcolahadrco1.html ) any hard drive you install will not work. The connector is so small that you could easily think is part of the hard drive BUT ITS NOT! And you will gleefully ship both items connected together right off to Ohio making it impossible to install a new drive into your laptop at home. Making the laptop an expensive paperweight. Youll think you have gone crazy buying hard drives that wont connect and that all of the recommendations from the technical help desk folks are IDIOTS!.
4. 4. You should also learn that there are two possible types of laptop hard drives, SATA and EIDE. Also, be careful from where you buy them. I bought a SATA drive by accident from a PX sponsored dealer on line. I did this in a moment of weakness after spending several hours researching the problem of replacing the data and the drives. So, I was a little tired and failed to notice the Web site disclaimers and warnings that the buyer was responsible for selecting the right drive as there were no returns unless the item was defective. After receiving the SATA drive and failing to install it, I was able to re-read the vendor Web Pages and learn of the draconian no return policy. Fortunately, I went to Best Buy to get the correct EIDE drive (sans the proper connector, which they do not sell) and I stumbled on a Rocketfish SATA hard drive enclosure. So I will use the 250 Gig drive as part of my new back up system.
I hope you enjoyed my pain. I am now waiting on the $20 connector which is costing me an additional 11 bucks for shipping. It should be here by the time I return from Chicago (I hope). Remember, have a back up plan.
In the past two weeks we have experienced two technology catastrophic events when it comes to computers. The first was the sudden death of Dees laptop hard drive. A three year old laptop with a 60 Gig drive gave up its electrons without warning except for a momentary high shrill sound just before the screen went blank with a small flashing cursor. Well dont worry I have a one year old 500 Gig WD network hard drive that I was patting myself on the back for being soooo wise in buying and installing. Uh, what the ***^&#@! the hard drive is dead!
Now here are some additional lessons I think you should consider when you are loading up your drives with kids photos, important scanned documents, e-mail, music, that kind of stuff. These are:
1. 1. Quote the Texas multi-millionaire Ross Perot to yourself everytime you go out and buy stuff (especially computers) and remember things break!
2. 2. Even with a centralized backup system, back up the backup, stripe hard drives, and make CDs or better still data DVDs and store extra copies of your stuff everywhere. Lucky for me, I do have several hard drives and CDs and a few DVDs full of family photos. Except they are all here and I need to ship some out to family and friends.
3. 3. Very important if you decide (like I did) to send out the dead laptop hard drive to a forensic specialist to recover e-mail, documents, and stuff, take a moment extra to physically inspect the hard drive. You see, on Toshibas, Dells, and several other brands of laptops have A SMALL HARD DRIVE TO COMPUTER CONNECTOR YOU MIGHT OVERLOOK LIKE I DID. Sorry . I did not mean to shout. Without this small connector (see http://laptopupgrade.stores.yahoo.net/hpcolahadrco1.html ) any hard drive you install will not work. The connector is so small that you could easily think is part of the hard drive BUT ITS NOT! And you will gleefully ship both items connected together right off to Ohio making it impossible to install a new drive into your laptop at home. Making the laptop an expensive paperweight. Youll think you have gone crazy buying hard drives that wont connect and that all of the recommendations from the technical help desk folks are IDIOTS!.
4. 4. You should also learn that there are two possible types of laptop hard drives, SATA and EIDE. Also, be careful from where you buy them. I bought a SATA drive by accident from a PX sponsored dealer on line. I did this in a moment of weakness after spending several hours researching the problem of replacing the data and the drives. So, I was a little tired and failed to notice the Web site disclaimers and warnings that the buyer was responsible for selecting the right drive as there were no returns unless the item was defective. After receiving the SATA drive and failing to install it, I was able to re-read the vendor Web Pages and learn of the draconian no return policy. Fortunately, I went to Best Buy to get the correct EIDE drive (sans the proper connector, which they do not sell) and I stumbled on a Rocketfish SATA hard drive enclosure. So I will use the 250 Gig drive as part of my new back up system.
I hope you enjoyed my pain. I am now waiting on the $20 connector which is costing me an additional 11 bucks for shipping. It should be here by the time I return from Chicago (I hope). Remember, have a back up plan.
