Jeremy Dieterich A Chronicle of My Life

You know, there was a time when Mom and Dad would gripe and complain about me taking things apart -- wristwatches, clock radios, my GameBoy.  Well, who does Mom turn to when her computer starts repeatedly blue screening?  And what's the first thing I do, since I know she probably hasn't backed up her files in... ever?

Hard Drive removed from laptop.

Hard Drive attached to my (sweet) rig to copy files.

A fairly routine deal (nothing as complicated as this), but I do attribute at least some of my technical prowess to those days of dismantling things, even if I never got some of them back together.  These days, though, I tend to download a service manual before I start and only resort to potentially destructive force when I've exhausted all other options (there's a crock pot in our garage that was deceptively constructed, but some solder and heatshrink and it's good as new).

Anyway, the data all copied fine, so there should be no worries there.  Tonight or tomorrow I'll have to put the drive back in the computer and see what's wrong with it.  It could be hardware failure (the drive did take an unusually log time to spin up) or data corruption due to a virus.  Or Gremlins.  They get into everything.