I have a 430-watt ThermalTake PSU here. Bought it a month after getting the
video card. My old PSU worked okay with the video card as it was a 400-watt
CompUSA power supply, but my computer shocked me every time I touched the
case and even sometimes when I plugged in a USB device and I also lost a
hard drive and another one was starting to begin to behave strangely, (When
I would boot up the computer, it would turn off and on very rapidly) so I
got rid of the PSU. Funny how ever since my new PSU, I haven't been zapped
by my computer once yet and that hard drive that was beginning to behave
strangely hasn't caused me any problems since. My other hard drive however
was toast. The BIOS wouldn't even recognize it. The good news was that Mom
was getting a new computer built by me so I took the 80 gig hard drive out
of the old computer. (Identical hard drive to the one I lost.) The hard
drive I lost began making bad grindy noises, so I immediately began backing
up my files by putting them on another computer through our network as it
was the fastest way and managed to get everything backed up. I shut off the
computer and turned it back on an hour later. Everything was working fine
and I started playing music when it happened - the hard drive began making
grindy noises again and the computer crashed. It never worked since then.
Now I do backup my files from time to time so I didn't have a bunch of
things to backup, but that would have been all my latest personal files,
bookmarks, contacts, and e-mails I would have lost so I backed them up at
the first sign of trouble - there was no hesitation. I said 'uh oh' and
began backing up immediately basically. Every location on my computer has
folders called 'new' and 'old'. For example, when you open up the pictures
folder, you will then see a folder called 'New' and a folder called 'Old'.
The folder called 'Old' are files I have already backed up, and the folder
called 'New' has my latest files that I haven't backed up, this way I don't
have to back up the same files twice and waste CDs. I also organize my CDs
where all my music is on one set of CDs, pictures on another, and so on.