An Old Cranky Hard Drive
The storms hit here on Monday evening. We lost power several times but never for longer than a few seconds. Annoyingly, the power was out for just long enough that we had to run around the house and set all our clocks again. By the third time, there was a lot of grumbling and foul language.
The last time the power went out, there was a louder than normal crack. When the power came back on, my big computer wouldn't. Well, rats. Tuesday I delivered the tower to Bits & Bytes of Katy, TX, my favorite and closest computer store. Today I heard the results. It came right on the first time they tried it but there are some issues. There are several read/write issues with the hard drive. They explained it to me but that was hours ago and I have no recollection of the specifics. The computer came with Windows 7 and at some point I upgraded it to Windows 10 but that wasn't actually supported. I'm not sure what that means except potential problems. There was a long list of issues all indicating a complete and catastrophic crash was coming. Not necessarily imminent but certainly coming. They said I should be very sure to back up everything I do on the computer from now on because they weren't sure how long it was going to last.
I don't remember when I bought this computer but it can't be older than 10 years since Windows 7 came out in October of 2009. And it can't be younger than 3 1/2 years since Windows 10 came out in July of 2015. I'm guessing 7 or 8 years old.
So, I have ordered my new tower. It will be faster, bigger, bolder and better. They will transfer all my data and a couple of the programs. I'll have to load the rest of the programs. It will be at least a week of tweaking it in an attempt to get it running and looking just like it did before the storms on Monday night. It will be ready for pick up either tomorrow or on Monday. I'm happy and sad.