Originally Posted by selena

I just had one die last Friday, and am working off my junk machine now. It wasn't like a failing HDD where you can often tell that it is going to happen. One minute it worked, the next it was gone.

I am not great with hardware, and I'm not sure what to get as a replacement. It was set up as a RAID, and I'm not sure how that impacts things.

But that is my technical tale of woe for the day. To answer the OP question, only when absolutely necessary. Setting up all my programs is too much of a PITA.