So, my much-too-expensive recording laptop fried its Mobo. It seemed to be related to the cardbus slot. I had an esata card in it when it fried and the card was just molten hot. I had a client recording from last friday on it that I hadn't backed up yet.
So, I pulled the HD and I happened to already have a sata dock that takes both standard and slim drives. It worked perfectly, data recovered!
This dock was only $35! Excellent investment! Also allows me to just buy raw drives.
Anyway, I had this beast of a laptop since 2006. It was a first gen Dual Core 2 and it always ran hot as hell. When I bought it I was trying to use it as my only DAW CPU but thanks to economics of PCs it now makes perfect sense to run my i7 tower AND a decent laptop and together they don't add up to what the fried piece cost 4 years ago. Also means I can knock around location recording with a $600 piece. I actually spec'd a unit on dell.com with both built-in FW and esata and a 7200RPM drive for $674. 4 gigs of RAM too. Way more than I need for location recording. And the thing will run cool as well - latest Core 2.
So, it's sad to have the loss, but I didn't lose any data, I can still use the HD from the old machine and I'll be upgrading to a wonderful new machine for less than it would cost to fix the old one.
I call this a win overall. Reminds me of the Simpsons when their TV breaks and it fast-cuts to a scene of the family in the car all cheering "We're GETTING A NEW TV!!!!"
