external hd question
 

went to turn on my external hd today and no power, tried multiple plugs, what could be prob?
is the hd inside ok?
i have so much stuff on there

all is well
 

it was the power supply, used one from another ext hd,
didnt think they went out

See this as an Omen for purchasing a new HD and making a full backup.

I've had a couple of them die here. Not sure what went bad. The transformers usually don't go bad. But diodes and capacitors are subject to age and eventual failure depending on quality and how far they're pushed (in terms of heat dissipation, load, etc.).

I have purchased Iomega external drives (2.5) as they came out as less prone to shocks, actually they have been thrown up about 15 meters and fall on concrete and they still running, according to the test. I wont try that though. They were much better than Lacie Rugged, let alone they also wear a nicer price tag.

At field work I load my files using Clip Browser on drive A, then connect drive B and make exact copies of my files, so I will have 2 identical copies of everything.
When traveling or flight I pack the two separated in two different bags, usually one check in and the other hand carry. So in any case I lose a luggage, I still have the other.
The Mac version comes with FW800, loading is very fast. There is FW400 and USB2 too...pretty convenient.

I can attest to this - very reliable portable drive powered by the blazing fast FW800 port for a very good price... Can't recommend them enough! However, as always, always at least double up!

Everything electronic (or mechanical, for that matter) is subject to "go out".

Hard drives are NOT any kind of "archival" storage.

If you don't have a backup somewhere else, be prepared to kiss it goodbye at any moment. Murphy will try to see that it is the worst possible moment.

Hard drive is so cheap that there is no excuse any more to not have a full backup. Every year you can get twice the capacity for the same price.

I use raw drives and plug them into a "drive dock" which connects to my computer(s) via USB2 and/or ESATA. But, of course, hard drives sitting on a shelf are NOT archival media, they are just a convenience for mid-term storage.

Until they come up with holographic recording to store 100TB into a crystal the size of a sugar cube, the only viable archival medium used today remains digital mag tape.

Unless they're made by LaCie. Sorry, I couldn't resist, but never again. Never.

Hahaha... Actually I was referring to the windings and the ferrite core -- those things are usually pretty tough.

But the diodes in the rectifier circuit and the capacitor filters are prone to getting burned out.

In my case two Firmtek power supplies went bad. It's a bit of a waste, to toss out this whole block of material when only a tiny bit of it goes bad. In today's society where everyone wants to be green and toss less into the trash, it would make sense to start figuring out how to repair instead of replace some things.

As for LaCie, I stay away from those things. They're not cheap, and too many of them went bad. None of my SATA drives have gone bad yet. And there are a couple dozen of them on the shelves for the past several years.