I’ve made a decision on what to do. I ordered a new 2 TB hard drive and it should be here by Monday. It’s going to be a bit of a pain to install, but I’ve done it before and I can do it again. Given my current financial situation I cannot afford to buy a brand new iMac. So spending about $75 on a hard drive and doing the work myself was the most economical and sensible solution.

I hate to admit it, but I almost thought of building my own PC.  I was kind of envious of the “battle station” threads I see on /g/ and used some of their sources like Logical Increments, but the machine I had picked out was just as expensive as an iMac. And I quickly realized that I didn’t want to run Windows for a DAW, and neither Windows nor Xubuntu is any kind of substitute for OS X.

I’m still muddling around on my iMac, but I can’t do any lasting work on it. I do not trust the dying hard drive, so I still can’t make any music. Also, this iMac is pretty old (over 7 years) and El Capitan will be the last OS I can run. But I am on Mavericks right now, so I’ll take the time to download and install EC on the new drive later.

So, this isn’t the end of Ratan X. Just a new(isn) beginning.  When I installed a new drive back in Dec 2013, I told people I’d be happy if I got another year out of my drive. And I ended up getting nearly 3. Again, I’ll be happy if I get a year out of this new drive (and for nothing else to fail). Hopefully by then I’ll be on better financial footing and be able to get a totally new machine. Whether that is an iMac or not is anybody’s guess. Depends how I like El Capitan and the reviews Sierra (and beyond) get.