(no subject)

A comment left by the jaw-droppingly accomplished kehlen_crow got me to thinking about just how long I've had my current work machine, named Montaigne. I looked at the date stamps of the earliest files on my machine, which suggested mid-December 2012, which is confirmed by my LJ post of the 15th of that month.

I must confess to having experienced something of a "pity party" yesterday, but in the cold, gray light of the next morning, I think that party was fueled, in part, by a reluctance to make a decision regarding What To Do™.

Ultimately, I would've liked to have copied the data from the drive onto, say, a replacement SSD, and then go on with my life. However, despite the software-engineer streak in me, there is only so much that can be done by repetitively attempting to create a system image that can later be restored.

At this point, I am confident that—between my manual backups and my use of SpiderOak—loss of data is not a big worry. It's that spaghetti-bowl of intermingled operating system and applications that's at stake, and I'm quickly wrapping my mind around the fact that it just is not going to survive.

I need to buckle down and get stuff done.

Cheers...

Montaigne recovery...

It turned out to be fairly straightforward to download a copy of Windows 10 and install it on a USB device so that it acts like an install disk.

It was also fairly straightforward to swap out the old hard drive and replace it with a new one. The new unit is a 960 GB SSD that I bought at Fry's on the way home from taiji last night.

The installation appears to be moving along, with over 95% of "files ready for installation" at 11:23 am.

Installing Windows was the easy part...

It's not enough to back files up, as I'm finding to my consternation.

One piece of good news is that after inserting the old hard drive into a cheap enclosure, it appears to be readable like a champ. The hardware may be so-so, but it would seem, for now, to be on my side of so-so. The big issue that has delayed things is Windows' reluctance to read data that it considers as "not mine."

It's not a show-stopper. I've been able to change permissions. Still, I have been caught with my digital pants around my ankles as far as my mail mail is concerned. And my list of must-install applications just keeps getting longer.

Sigh.