Not Quite Back to the Abacus Yet
The hardware problems have mostly been bludgeoned into submission. After spending a while hoping there was a solution which didn’t involve screwdrivers and crawling around under the desk, I gave in and started moving cables at random.
I eventually got it to work by moving the disk from one of the ‘main’ SATA channels to one of the ‘extra’ two on the motherboard. I have no idea why this would have worked, since the BIOS could see the disk on any channel, so that should surely have ruled out any hardware problem on the motherboard, no?
The reason I didn’t want to open the case was mainly because of The Dust. When I first installed the drive I cleaned out all of the dust bunnies lurking within, but after a few days they were back, just as numerous and vigorous as before. The flat isn’t even all that dusty, where did it come from? My case even has a dust filter behind the front panel, but I’m not sure what this is meant to achieve, since it also has a power supply, which is continuously sucking dust-laden air in through its fan and depositing it inside the case.
Does anyone make positive-pressure computer cases yet?