When your computer crashes

A couple of weeks ago my Dell Dimension XPS crashed. That is a major disaster in my daily life.

The XPS was over six years of age double the expected life of a computer.

It was crammed full of things I’ve worked on or done over its six year lifespan. Pictures, genealogical research, correspondence, emails, email addresses, passwords you name it.

A lot of it was irreplaceable, particularly old photos of ancestors in my family tree.

I went to Best Buy in Las Vegas and bought a replacement—another Dell Studio XPS 8100. (It would be, essentially the newest version of my old Dell XPS).

But how to get all that irreplaceable stuff off the old XPS onto the new XPS?

I had it all backed up on an external hard drive. But it is all compressed and you couldn’t actually see the file to determine if you wanted to recover it or not.

I have been successful in keeping all those irreplaceable pictures and stuff, all thanks to a young fellow named Enrique in the Geek Squad at the Best Buy store on Rainbow in Las Vegas.

The thing that allowed the solution was Enrique’s suggestion I simply take the two hard drives from my old XPS and insert them in what he called an “enclosure.”

And that is exactly what I did. Simply remove the old hard drives from the crashed computer and insert them in this “enclosure” which has a USB cable you can plug into your new computer. That permits you to then access the old hard drives and there all your data still sits. Nothing lost, easily viewable, and usable in that “enclosure.”

It turns out it is just like having two more external hard drives; and added storage space available to your new computer.

So just what is this “enclosure” thing? It is manufactured by an outfit called Thermaltake. On their website click the menu item called Storage>Docking Station to take you to the page where the “enclosure” is found. Officially they call it the BlacX Duet.

You can read all about it there. The one I have is the one you see in the picture above. It is designated as P/N: ST0014U. Costs $69.99. Worth every penny.

So if you ever run into the problem (and you will, sooner or later) I had and need a solution about recovering your valuable files, try it.

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