The best $60 I've spent

So now that school is done, I have a bunch of chore-type things to do. I have an older desktop computer that I haven't been able to use since I don't have a desk anymore (long story), but there's a bunch of files on it that I needed to save. Unfortunately, something inside the computer - either the motherboard or video card - died and the computer couldn't boot. I tried last summer to open the case to see what was inside but for the life of me (and my mom) we just couldn't get it opened.

Sunday afternoon I decided to take a crack at it again, but this time I really didn't care if the box got damaged in the process. So with bits of plastic flying around and screws everywhere, I pretty much disassembled the entire thing. (This is why I'm not a computer tech) By the end of Sunday (with a brief run to the computer store to buy a hard drive case), I had gotten myself into a fluster - with a bunch of cuts on my hands to boot. Can we say frustrating?

I decided to try again last night in the middle of a massive storm. At least I didn't need to plug it in. So after trying again, I finally managed to pull out the hard drive (with no additional battle wounds) and squeeze it into the case. I quickly (praying the entire time) plugged it into the wall and my laptop. After a few minutes (I think it needed to do an initial read or something), the drive finally became accessible to my laptop!!! With a few minutes of digging I found the nearly lost photos of my Dad's business trip to England a few years ago along with a few digital photos from the last family reunion I attended. I copied all those to my laptop just in case. I still have more files to clean up and transfer but those were the super important ones. I may even use this hard drive as an extra backup drive. It seems to be easier to hook-up than my other external drive.

Every once in a while things go right. You'll never know how grateful I was last night! That had to be the best $60 I've spent in a long time. Happy endings do happen from time to time.

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