Well, it turns out that some of those trips were my fault: a misdiagnosis of some problems I was having. The new 'puter has been up and running for several days without a hiccup, and I've got 90% of my backup files restored. All that remains is to attack the old drive and see what I can retrieve of my Poser and Vue scenes (which were, in aggregate, way too big to save on CD, although in retrospect I should have at least saved off my favorite files. Live and learn, I hope...).