Yesterday, I wrote that I would be going out today to make an important purchase but that will not after all happen.

I have been having trouble with the PC recently. It is sometimes reluctant to start up and may need several attempts to set it going. I thought I had solved the problem but then I noticed something: in the list of external drives connected to the PC, one was missing. Drive H refused to appear despite me unplugging it and plugging it in again and rebooting the computer. Not unreasonably, I decided that after a long life of faithful service, it had finally given up the ghost. I proposed going to PC World on the morrow to buy a new one.

In case you are wondering, the demise of one of my backup drives does not entail any loss of data. I am punctilious about regularly backing up my data. All my important files have at least two backup copies on separate drives. That of course includes drive H which contains backups but is itself also backed up.

Roll forward to yesterday afternoon and a second problem appeared. I use a lot of portable programs, storing them on a USB flash drive. This means that if I go anywhere, I can take the flash drive with me and have all my familiar software accessible on whatever computer I use. The flash drive includes a launcher which can be made to appear at the press of a key. Except that suddenly, it was no longer appearing…

I spent several hours trying all sorts of things and at last, just as I was thinking of giving up, I got everything working again.

One thought sparked another and it occurred to me to try the “failed” external drive again. I was holding it in my hand as I plugged in its power cable and I immediately felt a continuous vibration: the disc was spinning as it should! I tried plugging it into a USB socket and – bingo! – there it was, bright and cheerful in the list of drives!

I tested it carefully, of course, but it is working perfectly and doesn’t need to be replaced. The fault is not in the drive but in the computer. At some point I shall have to have an expert look it over and find out what’s causing the intermittent failures. Or maybe it’s time to invest in a new PC built with the latest technology and operating system. Something to think about…