[conspire] Replacement Computer Was: 3rd Master Hard Disk Error

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> Thank you to everyone for letting me clutter you inbox.  I found it
> helpful just to write out the information.  So after a lot of web
> searching, I ordered a new Lenovo laptop from newEgg.  AMD Ryzen
> processor.  I checked the exact model of CPU and graphics against AMD
> web-site.  It has a 2.5" internal SATA.

Lucky you.  I imagine you're going to be really happy with this puppy.

> After making sure it is in working order, I will carefully remove many
> small screws and remove the harddrive and install the drive that has
> been an external drive to run Linux on other laptop.  Then I will have
> one laptop that starts as Win10 for those "special" activities.  And
> another laptop that just boots from internal drive with Linux, and an
> "spare" drive with Win10.

Seriously:  Try _an SSD_ in the new Lenovo.  You'll never settle for
spinning rust again, after you've seen the huge performance difference.
Plus, they're utterly silent, draw far less power, emit essentially no
heat, and reduce system weight compared to spinning rust (hard drives).  

But really, it's the insane performance difference that will turn your
head.  

Spinning rust continues to have a very legitimate role when you need
large _amounts_ of storage.  It costs a lot less per gig.  But you can
have both fast primary storage _and_ capacious ancillary storage by
having an SSD inside your machine, and a hard drive (or RAID array of 
them) in an external, detachable enclosure.

> Lastly, install and test diagnostic utilities.   

Well, at least download them and archive a copy somewhere.  
The classic way to do that is on an optical disc, which is still
pragmatic although it may seem a bit old-hat.  Burn the disc, 
label it with a Sharpie, pack it away as a master software archive in
case ever needed.