Dell tech...

[Mugwump]

....arrived with my new HD...nice guy too, he even left the old one here for me to do file transfers.. .......saves me a lot of grief 

[BallAquatics]

Cool.  Once you get your stuff off of it, turn it over and install it up-side-down and then install a fresh copy of your favorite Linux distro on it.

Quite often, you can get some more life out of a bad drive by turning it over and putting the load on the top bearings instead of the bottom ones..... it's worth a try anyway.   

Dennis

[Mugwump]

Cool.  Once you get your stuff off of it, turn it over and install it up-side-down and then install a fresh copy of your favorite Linux distro on it.

Quite often, you can get some more life out of a bad drive by turning it over and putting the load on the top bearings instead of the bottom ones..... it's worth a try anyway.   

Dennis

I have another drive that I can use for that.....the bad one has to go back......eventually anyway...LOL....actually, It's not even switched yet  ...

bad thing is when I switch, I'll need to upgrade again....as it's 8.1 again, I think??....we'll see when 'I' pop it in....nice guy said cool beans, you can handle it... ...I told him that I'd prefer to do so, because I wanted to strip my stuff off of there....

[LizStreithorst]

I'm glad you got a nice guy rather that a mean spirited arsehole.  I've found that down my way most repair people are nice if you know something about the problem you're faced with.