My photography teacher back in the '80s took out a small business loan to get her Hasselblad.

Last night, My main PC crashed hard. It wouldn't boot into Windows (I'd get the starting Windows screen, but then it would reboot itself), and when I tried to use diagnostic software by booting off a CD, it wouldn't recognize ANY of my three physical hard drives (one for system/program files and two for data). I was terrified that I'd lost everything, because, of course, the last time I backed up was over a year ago. After a poor night's sleep, I mounted the two data drives in another PC and, to my great relief, they seem to be OK. I'm backing them up as I write this. I'm a bit a-sceered to check the system drive. I had actually tried to image it earlier this week, but Ghost kept having problems doing it. I suppose that should have been a tip-off right there.

Moral: Back up regularly!

Jon, have you checked the motherboard battery?

That would never even have occurred to me, Daniel. The computer seems to work OK when I boot off a CD. Would that happen if the battery was weak?

Various things can happen with a weak motherboard battery. Often it's video or drive related in my experience.

It really all depends on the motherboard manufacturer, I have had problems from Asus to Apple.

If yous uses a standard nickle-sized button battery, it might be worth it to try a new one.

So I shouldn't get any motherboards from the beginning of the alphabet. I'll start with Biostar.

heee

I'll check it out. Can't hurt!

t edit After I check out the system drive...

I really need a second hard drive. Well, what I'd really like to do is extend my primary drive, but that's too much fuss. I'll uninstall and reinstall apps.

What brands of drive are most reliable these days? Is Best Buy pricing reasonable, or should I order online or schlep to Frye's?

I've got a couple of Western Digital My Book drives and a few of the Seagate Free Agent drives that seem to be holdling up pretty well.