I did it!

A few years ago, I would never have dreamed about opening up a computer case and tinkering around on the inside, let alone totally replacing a motherboard on a computer, but that is exactly what I just did last week.

With the help of my wonderful brother Bri, (in Sydney) and the technology of skype, we went through all options and he found a 'brand new' motherboard that could fit my machine and all it's existing components, right here on TradeMe. So I jumped on line and managed to pick it up for $45! Yeah, what a bargain. So, we went through all the anti-static precautions when dealing with computer components and then following his instruction, I disconnected everything from the motherboard, realigned the standoffs to fit the new motherboard, inserted it and re-attached all the components.

Then there came a bit of fluffy around for 2 days, trying to install windows on an old drive first to try and recover my data, but as it turned out, I was in the end (after attaching it to another computer to see what was on there), able to just reconnect the 1st IDE drive and run windows. Then installed the new drivers for the new motherboard and I was away. I then connected the 2 SATA drives which had originally been set in a RAID configuration (ready to use a special software to read them) and wouldn't you know it - the drives were being read as a dynamic drive and presto, there was all of my data - I was so happy I cried! 5 years of photos that I thought I had lost, fully recovered - 10 years of financial data, all recovered, along with various other files that were way less important.

I don't wish to do it again any time soon, but at least I am way more confidant now with the insides of a computer and 'could' do it if I needed to. First though - backing up all important files to an external hard-drive.