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flash, fzzz, blue smoke
I'm sure that external hard drives are not supposed to flash, fzzz and issue forth blue smoke, but mine just did. I have been running it for about three years. I can't make up my mind if that is good value for money or not. I know that I have run hard drives for a lot longer than that before anything went wrong. I guess thems the odds though. Thank god that I have finally woken up to the need to keep my data backed up. I have been running all my music and photos on one disc and making a direct copy to another disc every night, so all is not lost. In fact, nothing has been lost...except for the disc, of course. I'm not even sure that there is anything wrong with the disc, it seems to be more to do with the firewire sockets, but who knows for sure, and I guess if I can't get access to the disc then it might as well be so much scrap metal and plastic. The only problem I have now, of course, is that I have nothing to back-up to. I had sworn off buying any new technology for a few months, but I think I am going to have to buy a new disc. Fortunately they can be picked up relatively cheaply. I'm off eBaying for a new disc. I might get one of those fancy smancy NAS discs. That would certainly make life easier now that we are a two Mac family.
mr mcmuffin on 1 Jan 2007 @ 04:24 PM ✲ Permalink
Comments
I think you will find it is only the pwer supply thats frazzled. If you remove the drive and go to Maplin, for about 20 quid you can get a box with power supply and usb interface which will allow you to use it again or at least recover your data.
Posted by: Keith | 3 Jan 2007 19:28:56
We use NAS drives at work. They're pretty good as a dumping ground for stuff on a network, though quite slow compared to "proper" disks or even USB/FireWire disks.
Posted by: Steve | 10 Jan 2007 22:51:35
It's never good when the magic smoke comes out.
It's a little-known fact that all techno-gadgetry runs on magic smoke, not electricity, such that when it leaks and the smoke escapes, it stops working.
At least you're backing up. I've lost far too much stuff recently (due to theft) so I've now acquired an old raid array from work and plan to network that in to the rest of the house to store everything on (and lock it away in a cupboard, so hopefully it won't vanish!).
Posted by: Guinny | 27 Jan 2007 17:46:35
