I now have a new replacement hard drive and my system is up and running. While my computer was down I started looking around for a drive. Because of the time it was taking I considered buying one so I could use my computer. I would then add the warranty replacement as a secondary drive.

I found a Western Digital 160 GB drive on sale “after rebate” for under $200. Great drive and a smoking price. The size is perfect for the video editing I am doing. So I bought the drive.

Then Dell support came through and finally replaced my dead drive (see the previous entries about what a pain that was). The WD 160 drive came with a newer Ultra ATA controller that supports > 137GB drives. I replaced my older card with this one then installed the drive. Powered on the system and laughed when both drives were recognized and worked. That was too easy. Then I partitioned and formatted the 160 drive into two 80 GB drives.

Finally, the pain of re-installing my applications and data. That was a whole day of work. But now I am finished and I have, what feels like, a new computer.

Let’s hope it lasts.