Experiencing intermittent problems on boot up detecting hard drives. There are three hard drives. I use this computer solely for video editing. Generally the problem has been detecting one of the storage drives. This morning it wouldn’t detect any of the drives. Finally unplugged C drive and plugged it back in and all three drives came up. Here’s my question: This computer is 5 years old and gets lots of use with video editing. Is it time just to get a new computer?

Not necessarily a new computer but a new hard drive perhaps. The electronices of a computer will last forever if treated properly, but the mechanics of a hard drive will wear out. Five years is a good life for a hard drive if it has had lots of use. I would make sure I have backups of important data on a five year old hard disk. If the spindle bearings give up altogether you could be stuffed. Stuart

A foolish man would certainly beleive that the electronics of a computer would last forever...give any amount of care.

Well tell me druidvideo, what is going to cause a transistor to fail providing it is not overheated, overloaded or subject to extremes of heat and humidity. I have electronic equipment that is probably older than you are (30 years +) and is still in perfect working order. That also includes a PSI powering a an AMD K6-2 400 that started life powering an Intel 80386. The 386 motherboard was thrown away years ago, still in perfect working order - and while we are at it, need any 16 bit DIL memory chips. Got loads, in perfect working order. What I dont have is a cassete player, VCR or disk drive that is older than five years. Why - becasue the mechanical componants failed, not the electronic componants. They wore out. Stuart