Well, it's not been my month for hardware. Or rather, had I fixed it right the first time...

Some may recall when I thought my hard drive was failing and I asked advice as to what kind of hard drive to buy. I decided on two new hard drives actually - although not my original intent, it's what I did end up doing.

So, anyway, I'm floating along thinking all was well when those errors and computer crashes began returning. Or really, more like stop working than crashing. Couldn't save anything, icons disappearing, couldn't log out, couldn't reboot - input/output errors. blah. blah. blah.

Well, with these hard drives less than a month old, I doubted their failure - though not completely out of the realm of possibility, I doubted it. (one is still not even partitioned yet - but it was the first to not be recognized when by bios when rebooting).

I decided it must be the motherboard. See, this is why when work was so slow during 2009 & early 2010 and my friends and family said, "why don't you fix computers?" I said, "naw." This is also why I didn't make the best auto mechanic in the world. My method for diagnosing something usually consists of replacing parts until the symptoms go away.

So, I ordered a new motherboard that arrived today. I'll stick that in later and see if the symptoms go away.

But OH, here's a funny part: So, when I was doubting hard drives and suspecting motherboard I dug my old hard drive out of the trash, blew off the cigarette ashes, and plugged it into my spare/test machine that has sata plugins. You know what? Yep, it fired up and booted the OSes. That hard drive wasn't bad. So, it must be the motherboard.... right?

Thank Sweet God I'm employed regularly now.