My laptop died in front of me a couple of days ago. I was not even touching it. The screen flashed blue and showed the dreaded “your computer has encountered a problem and needs to restart” message.
Only, when it restarted it never came back.
Diagnostics soon identified the problem. The m.2 hard drive was dead. That’s the biggest problem with SSD’s. Unlike the older mechanical drives, that fail slowly over time and have built in redundancy and error correction systems, SSD’s either work… or they don’t. Case in point. This one don’t.
Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff
I ordered a replacement drive, taking the opportunity to double the storage capacity from 256Gb to 512Gb. May as well make it into an upgrade, I thought. Would have liked 1Tb, but the board isn’t rated for that power drain. When the unit arrived the following day I removed the dead drive, no bigger than a stick of gum, and clicked the new one into place. One screw to hold it, ten to secure the back of the laptop. Nikki kindly installed Windows for me from a handy-dandy OEM disc and one of our unused licenses, and did available updates while I was at an Optimist Club zone meeting, saving me the thumb-twiddling monotony of that experience, and away we went.
And It’s All Small Stuff
With the OS loaded, I quickly reinstalled my core programs over the ‘net. Synced browser bookmarks and history from one of my other devices (five, all synched to each other), and topped it off by installing my password manager. Not painless, but far from the tragedy I went through the first time this happened. I learned the hard way to make sure everything is backed up, everywhere. I planned for this eventuality. And the plan worked.
Total repair and reinstall time, just over two hours. And here I am typing away.
Oh, the data? Word files, spreadsheets, PDF’s, emails? Cloud. No data loss. None. Downloading serenely in the background as I type. What? You don’t think I trust my digital life to a laptop that could fail at any moment / be stolen / fall in a lake. Do you? Oh, no. Five devices, synched.
And because I have an effective laptop backup, I now have (wait for it…) a laptop back up.
And running, with a bigger hard drive and a new lease of life. Bonus, because of the fresh install I have none of the accumulated junk in the new system. I have instead a lean, mean computing machine. Cool. I win.
