Kentucky Fried Hard Drive, part 2......

Had some great NYC-style pizza for lunch with athenawindsong at Roc-A-Fellas. But first, I stopped at The Computer Zoo to purchase the external hard drive enclosure (which didn't work) and a FireWire PC card (which was much cheaper than I was expecting).

The new hard drive enclosure didn't work.

The FireWire card and connection to the hard drive didn't work either. (The card works; it's just that the combination of card and drive didn't work.)

Reinstalling Windows 98 didn't help either. I'm still getting BSODs when I connect the drive. I think it has something to do with rundll32.exe.

And so I tried using one of the other external hard drives I had. I installed the driver, and it worked! I'm backing up the laptop as I "speak" (well, type).

As for the old hard drive I was using for laptop backups, it's going to be semi-permanently connected to my desktop.

In the end, no data loss, but a loss of three days of time. As for the parts I bought, I'm sure I'll come up with a good use for them someday.

....but I got a DVD burner now!

Other than the so-called Kentucky Fried Hard Drive that I can longer use via its USB port and can therefore no longer connect it to the laptop for backups (...grumble grumble...) it was a rather productive week, computer-wise. (I can get an identical case to replace it, but it would cost $50.)

The morning I woke up at 1:30 am was the same morning I installed a 16x DVD+/-RW burner at 4 am. The big advantage to hardware upgrades in the wee hours of the morning is that there's no one to disturb me. Except for the cats. Mercury likes to keep me company when I'm on the computer.

As for the 4x CD burner I replaced, I reinstalled it earlier today, taking out the DVD-R drive. So now I have a CD burner and a DVD burner. I still have a closetload of older CD-Rs that are rated for 4x or slower, and the DVD burner doesn't record at thost slow speeds.

And while I'm burning DVDs, I can work on cleaning the clutter in the loft area.

I also helped out at M's day care center, doing some computer troubleshooting on Tuesday and today. We're getting a slight break on M's tuition due to my volunteer work. ( Here are this week's cases. )

I like playing with hardware, especially when I fix the problem. But when I don't fix the problem, I begin to start kicking myself internally.

My talent with PCs is why I'm thinking that I should consider chcking the software biz and becoming a PC technician and getting my A+ certification. Or maybe become self-employed and do it all -- software, hardware, network/system admin.