R.I.P. One Computer

Sadly, my 6-year-old HP Pavilion laptop, which has been a reliable and helpful tool, has bitten the dust. A black screen, and single flashes from lights near the Caps Lock and Num Lock keys meant CPU failure. I’m writing this post on a borrowed computer.

On Monday I’ll get acquainted with the new machine, and (of course) Windows 10. Why Monday? Because part of the setup process will be data recovery from the corpse.

One lesson learned:  back everything up. Even though I have copies of my really important documents in “the cloud,” a whole lot of stuff that didn’t seem all that important (but is) exists only on the now inaccessible hard drive. Hopefully recoverable.

So get an external hard drive, set up a cloud account, and do regular backups. Especially when your machine is getting on — 3 years and older, I would think.

7 comments

  1. You had a computer that lasted six years! Mine seem to have self-destruction built into them after eighteen months. Nearly lost another last week.

    You can take a hard drive out of a laptop, plug it into an external USB case and it works like a seperate drive, no need for weird data recovery software or anything. (I have loads of experience doing this.)

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    1. It was a real shock. It was working normally, then it wasn’t, like someone in great shape who keels over and dies of a heart attack. I did consider removing the hard drive as you suggest, but the place I’m getting the new computer from had a relatively good deal on complete setup, including data retrieval from the dead machine. I thought, “Well, I’m already spending several hundred dollars on this — what’s a few more? As they say, “Good, fast, cheap — pick two!”

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    1. Well, the HP Pavilion was so reliable, I naively thought it would last forever. But I bought an external hard drive along with the new computer, so hopefully will always have everything backed up.

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