Another new compy...

Gad. My Shuttle died today. Sort of--it's not completely dead, but it ain't working worth a damn.

First thing I tried to do was wake it up, the wake-up screen was a BSOD, and reboot said there was no disk. I thought I had another disk that had Win7 on it, but apparently that disk, although labeled Win 7, just has files.

Now I'm already feeling panicky. I *think* I have a full backup, on my backup server, but I've never had to go look, or try to recover from it.

Tried re-installing Win 7 on another disk (1.5TB; this *was* in my Win Home Server box, but may have been flaking out, I replaced it already, so I had this just sitting around). This isn't working...got a fair amount through, it did some CHKDSK repairs, etc, was beginning to do updates, and that failed to reboot the first time it needed to, and worse still, trying again I can't even see the disk any more. Went by MicroCenter after visiting a friend, got a new 1TB disk, and that too fails to go through the install process, ALSO not showing the disk the 2nd try.

I tried formatting the 1.5TB on my Mac Pro. That went fine, it seemed to be ok; not sure what the deal is, but I didn't try it back in the PC.

This is all very alarming, and after what is now at least 4 tries to install O/S on more than one disk, and trying to view disks on my Mac (mostly failing), I'm feeling a bit alarmed. Looks like tomorrow is another visit to Micro Center for a whole new set of parts...

At least this time I think I won't get the Shuttle-size box, that, although cutely small, hasn't really worked as well as I wanted. I tried to get a new video card for the Shuttle as week ago, saw a good price, only to discover after I got home that the box said it needed two slots, which the Shuttle cannot provide for a video card.

But I will be able to get something faster: 6 core, more/faster RAM (8GB, DDR3-1333). And a better video card before Skyrim shows up.

I don't mind the upgrade aspect, it's the panic over maybe losing my files. That is really worrying me--I'm thinking about how to be even more certain I have backups.