My computer is finally fixed! For over a week I was practically without a computer. It’s not easy for me to live without a computer for that long of a time. It all started on Monday, while watching a pirated version of ‘Farenheight 9/11′ my computer hard drive (HD) suddenly died. I was noticing problems with it before, but was previously unaware of this forthcoming doom. Thankfully, I had a copy of ‘SpinRite’ available. SpinRite is a famous HD recovering utility, so I immediately put it to work recovering what it can. 3 entire days later it was finally finished. It had done its job and had, at least temporarily, recovered my files and given me a working computer. After looking at the diagnostics of my HD, I realized that I needed to replace it, and soon. However, before I could do that I needed to backup any files of importance, like all my Japan pictures. I also needed to make an image of my HD so that I actually had an operating system on the replacement drive, as I left all my computer related CDs at home. These tasks took another half a week as many attempts failed as the hard drive sporadically decided to die again, and I came close to throwing my computer out of the window. So, after over a week of hell, I finally was able to buy a new HD, reformat it, mount the image of my old drive, repartition it, and check it for stability. - - - Success! I have a working computer again.

Red = Bad

Self explanatory