I perform brain surgery

As most of you probably know, my precious 120 GB Zune tragically crashed several weeks ago. Has it been a month by now? Time goes by so fast when I'm here.

Last Thursday, I purchased a new hard drive and a tool kit online from gadgetmenders.com. Their site had a nifty repair video, and I thought, "I can do this! I don't need to send it in."

I received the package today and almost immediately realized the process of repairing the device would be much more simple than the video made it look. Here, I should post the video in case you want to see it. I'll refer to it enough times anyway.

So there's a little blue tool they use to take the device apart. They included three in the repair tool kit I ordered, which puzzled me at first. Why would I ever need more than one? Well, maybe because the space is so tight I shredded off a good deal of the plastic on those things just trying to wedge them in there? Maybe there's another reason for it, but personally I'm glad I had three to partially destroy instead of just one. 

After spending a good twenty minutes prying the case apart, I finally was able to get a look inside the device.  I peeled the tape off the hard drive as instructed, but I didn't understand the concept of lifting the small black latch. The guy says to "lift it upwards in the vertical direction." I thought that sounded redundant, because up is a vertical direction. So as I struggled with that, I popped the stupid latch right off.

I fumbled with it, called my uncle for help (what could he have told me?), cried, and then kept on going. It would be ridiculous to have to replace the hard drive cable too, but the old hard drive just wouldn't let got of it. I ended up just mutilating the white piece with a screwdriver until the cable came loose. No harm in breaking a broken piece of equipment, right? Now, how would I get the cable attached to the new hard drive if I couldn't figure out how to get it loose from the old one?

That was actually a lot easier. The guy in the video says to restore the latch to "its horizontal position." Oh! So flip up to release, flip down to secure. The difference between the terms "direction" and "position" was crucial here, for me. Now the whole latch idea made much more sense. I managed not to break the latch on the new hard drive.

I snapped the device back together, which was almost as difficult as taking it apart. Then I plugged the device into my computer to prepare for the software update. The screen lit up.

I was so excited to see this again. She was alive, right?

Nope, this image popped up next. The original error message. But I refused to be defeated. I took apart the device again (much easier once it was loosened, and once I knew what the heck I was doing), and saw that the hard drive cable looked a little askew. I flipped up the latch, pushed the cable in again, flipped down the latch, praying the whole time it had just been inserted wrong, and I hadn't damaged the cable somehow in this stressful process. Popped the device together again. Turned it on. 

It just gave me an error message (3 or 4, I don't remember. It's possible both showed up at different times.) Another error, really? What more did I have to do? Not too much: soon the screen displayed Error 2, which is lack of the proper software. Finally, my baby lived again!

It took some time to get the software on my computer to recognize that I connected a new device, and then installing the software onto the new Zune and syncing all my files seemed to take forever, but now she works just as well as before the crash. Except I don't have the default Zune photos anymore. I don't know what happened with that, but now I'm just using one of my personal photos as a background image. It will serve as a constant reminder that my Zunebug contains new hardware, and I don't know yet how I feel about that.

And that's the story of my day as a brain surgeon. Don't ever call on me to perform a brain transplant again, on technology or on a living thing. I'm pretty sure this was a one-time deal.