I should have added to my list of predictions for 2005 that my antiquated PC would finally die. My Gateway Pentium II 350 arrived nearly six years ago on the same day that I brought my new daughter home from the hospital. At the time it was fantastic; so fast, my work PC at the time was an old 386 with 24MB RAM. Originally it came with win 98, 64MB RAM and a 6GB harddrive. Since then it has had a 30GB drive added and RAM is up to 256MB.

On Saturday it suffered its first catastrophic hardware failure: the 30GB died and I couldn’t get it to boot. Luckily I had backed up my entire photo collection about two days earlier.

Recovery was painful. I managed to get it booted on the 6GB drive alone (my main OS is on the other drive). I sighed in semi relief. At least I knew the motherboard etc was OK. However, the information on the 30GB drive is what has the value for me: my photos, my work, every website I have ever developed, music. Most of it backed up somewhere, except for the latest stuff.

I plugged the 2nd drive back in: no luck, it wouldn’t start. The next morning I tried again: by some miracle it started. So the whole day yesterday the computer didn’t get turned off: I busily burnt every single bit of data I needed to the pile of CDs.

It’s working OK now, but I will be careful what I save over the next day or two. I can relax over Christmas knowing that my data is safe, but wary that any day now I could be forced to shop for a new computer.