[Pat McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Pat McCarthy

I just had a bit of a scary experience with a second hard drive.

Some background: A few years ago I had a computer that died from an unknown cause. I took it to CompUSA and they said it was a result of a dead CPU fan and that the motherboard was probably fried. The symptom of the death was the computer only staying on for a few minutes then restarting.

So, today I decided that I could use some storage space on my new computer (I've got a gig left). I put the old hard drive (80 GB, so you can understand how tempting it was). I started up the computer and everything was fine, then, *restart*

So, I tried it again and it restarted sooner. By this point I was freaked out and shaking. I shut down the computer and nearly ripped the front of the computer case into little pieces. I removed the second hard drive and started the computer back up.

It’s still working. *Knocks on wooden desk* Whew.

I now believe that CompUSA’s diagnosis was right, but they should have also said that it could have also been a problem with the hard drive. Needless to say, I’m not using that hard drive again.

I have a happy ending to this story. More of a 'revisit'.
I was still living with 1 GB of storage on my computer's stock 40 GB hard drive.
Finally, my birthday rolled around and I came into some cash .
I went to CompUSA and bought a 160 GB Seagate interal hard drive and Mad Dog 3.5" external enclosure (A friend of mine who works there recommended the enclosure because it was on sale and better than the one that I was going to buy).
I brought the hard drive home and realized that I had a spot for it inside my tower. I installed it, formated it, and got it working perfectly.
I realized that I had an external hard drive enclosure and no drive for it.

Remember?

Originally Posted by Pat McCarthy

Needless to say, I’m not using that hard drive again.

Well, I forgot about saying that and put that old 80 GB drive into the external enclosure, plugged it in and decided that the best plan of action was to scan it with Norton Anti-Virus.
2 1/2 hours and 113 Adware 'Threats' later, I breathed a sigh of relief and went to deleting all of the stuff that I really didn't need on the drive.
The first thing?
The 'WINDOWS' folder! Windows ME to be specific.
After that, I deleted every program that I didn't know what it was or that I didn't want.
Looking at the files on the drive was like opening a time capsule from 3 years ago. It was amazing how unorganized my folder system was.

The drive has been running great since I hooked it up this past Friday.