I took my screwdriver and loosened the external box connectors held together by a decade of dust. Like a surgeon, I slowly exposed the critical components. A metal guard protected the hard drive. Ever so gently, the thin metal guard was teased out of the way. The drive itself was packed into a small confined space. It took several minutes to remove the power cable and ribbon connector. I slowly extricated the disk drive from its seating. (Clearly, the vendor did not want this model to be easily serviced by a user.)

The new machine was a modern workstation with an internal CD reader/writer. I opened it and disconnected the CD cables. I found a small piece of cardboard and stuffed it into an open cavity. The old hard drive was connected to the former CD cables and now rested comfortably on the cardboard, preventing any metal-to-metal electrical interference.

The new machine recognized the old drive as its secondary drive! Now at last we could transfer, backup copy and convert.

Sometimes, we forget the limitations of our technology. A practical experience such as this returns the manager, technician and network analyst back to basics. Sometimes, it takes low tech to do the job and make the user happy.

Lee Ratzan is a systems analyst at a health care agency in New Jersey and teaches technology at Rutgers University. Contact him at lratzan@scils.rutgers.edu.