Technology is great...

when it works. When it doesn't, WATCH OUT. A few times in the last month or so I've gotten a message about a fan malfunction. It was random, so I haven't worried much about it. Earlier this morning my computer was running REALLY slow so I decided to turn it off and start anew. Going through Microsoft's ridiculous method of choosing things half a dozen times to actually turn off your computer, I sat and waited half an hour and the computer never turned itself off. I finally had to just hold the power button to get it to shut down. So a few minutes later I turned the computer back ON. After a few I get a black screen with this message:

IDE Channel 3 Master Hard Disk S.M.A.R.T. Status bad. Immediately back up all data. Replace the hard drive. Failure may be imminent. Press F1 to continue.

So didn't that make me feel good? Not a message I ever got before and Failure may be imminent got my attention!

Many of you know I make mass quantities of digital photos. (e.g. 6381 during our trip to Italy in June.) After that crash five years ago where I lost a couple of years worth of pictures, I keep multiple copies of My Pictures folder. I haven't backed up in about two weeks, so the first thing I did was start copying My Pictures. It takes about three to four hours to do the transfer to the external hard drive. Thankfully that has finished and I'm now copying all my documents. When everything is done I will call my local geek guys who built the computer for me in the first place. Hopefully they can transfer all the programs, data etc. so I don't have to reload those. I really do like having a locally built computer instead of a stock brand. It is so much easier to upgrade or replace parts as necessary without buying a whole new system.