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The Great Hard Drive Surround Battle of '17

So, recently, my old computer died. In the past, when switching computers, I've followed the same procedure. I would stare sadly at it and lament about what secrets may have been held within the murky depths of its hard drive. If it yet contained some further spark of life, often I took out the important info like some sort of nefarious future dystopian government picking over the brain of a rebel leader.

Then, I would wipe it clean and send it on down the line. One child or the other would have said computer bestowed upon them and it would live out the remainder of its sad, uncomfortable life playing YouTube videos and Minecraft parodies until it simply couldn't take it anymore. It would then be consigned to the great electronic garbage heap (because hey, I recycle electronics... I'm not a monster).

This time, though, that wasn't even a possibility. It just wouldn't freaking turn on. So, after hitting it a few times and being told not to by my eminently sensible husband, I left it alone. "But," he said, "but you can harvest the hard drive! You can let it live again in some sort of robotic exoskeleton thing."

I put words in his mouth.

But when I hear "portable hard drive surround" what I IMAGINE is "robotic exoskeleton thing". Even though I know its not the same thing.

So, I got the exoskeleton at Staples. It should have been easy to make the hard drive but since technology hates me it was not.....

Step 1 involved taking the screws out of the front holes to release the front plate. Except that there were no screws. There were holes and when I poked them, nothing happened. When I poked the OTHER holes at the other end, that end plate fell off. It wasn't supposed to which is why this external hard drive doohickey may also have some super glue used in the construction.

Finally, after stabbing the holes with the provided stabby screw driver thing, I managed to pop the end plate off.

Step 2 involved connecting the hard drive thingy to the pluggy bits and then sliding it into the case. Except that I didn't know that the metal bits on the outside of the drive weren't supposed to be there and so step 2 was ACTUALLY taking the drive out and unscrewing things and throwing away metal until the thingy fit in the box. Rock on.

Step 3 involved screwing shit back together. But see, the holes in the front were warped from sticking the screwdriver in to pop out the front plate so the screws didn't want to go in straight. It almost became air born at this point.

When all was said and done, I finally got everything stuck together. It works. I even formatted that shit. Go me. I can save stuff on there which is neat. So now I have more storage for stuff. Unless the end keeps falling off. Then I have a slick black paperweight.

Have I mentioned this kind of stuff is why I hate technology?

Yeah.

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