Tonight’s plan.

I’ve been planning to swap out the 256 NVMe drive for a 1tb drive. This should be quick and then I’ll have more storage on my desktop.

Then I dropped the tiny screw into the PC. And it was lost to another dimension. I scoured the floor and desk and everywhere nearby with a magnet.

Nothing.

It must be inside the computer. I worried about it wedging itself between the motherboard and case. Or getting wedged into the power supply and shorting it. All of the worst case scenarios.

I removed the optical drive. Then the drive cages. I unplugged everything. Then unscrewed and removed the motherboard.

Still nothing.

So… I resolved myself to it being gone forever and went to work putting it all back together. I powered it on before I put everything back in place and screwed the last screws in.

Then I grabbed the external hard drive, and the cables to plug it all back in and power it on to continue the restore of data with a temporary screw holding the drive in place.

And what do I find? Right under the cords and cables I moved three times and looked over, under and around?

One Tiny Screw with a screwdriver tip for size comparison.
One tiny screw.