Oh no, my computer is sick. I’ve run malware, anti-virus and defrag tools but something is dramatically slowing my computer down. I schedule checkdsk to run the next time I reboot, and guess what, it wont run.   So I run pre-boot assessment on my Dell laptop, and get the dreaded 0142 error message – hard drive failure.

But wait, my hard drive is still working enough to run the computer, its just slow. What do I do? I keep working with it until it crashes totally, right? Noooooooo! I quickly backup critical files onto a external hard drive, and shut it off.

My hard drive is a 320Gb Western Digital Model. I look on Newegg.com and a 750Gb Western Digital is on sale. I buy it right away.

The drive comes in a few days. I download Acronis True Image software off the Western Digital site.

The instructions say that it is best to put the drive to be cloned in the place where the existing drive exists but, alas, my computer won’t boot in that configuration. My computer has two hard drive bays, but I don’t have a second adapter so I connect the drive with a USB 2.0 cable I have.

I run the True image software following the prompts and it takes hours, but it works. The next morning I go to see the screen and the cloning is successful. I put the new drive in the bay where the failing one was and power it up.

“It’s a miracle. It’s healed”.

I reran the pre-boot assessment and diagnostic test and everything passes.

I know from experience that everything doesn’t always work this well. But this time, thank God, it did.