Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2010/07/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]My farmhouse is not air-conditioned and it has been over 100 degrees almost every day for the past two weeks. The humidity is 90% or higher. So far, there is no computer damage. I had not even thought of that possibility. I'm trying to can everything in the garden that is ripe in a kitchen that is 104 degrees with no stove and a pressure canner on a hotplate. If my computer craps out, too, I'm moving to Canada. Tina On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Lawrence Zeitlin <lrzeitlin at gmail.com>wrote: > One consequence of the heat wave in the Northeast has been disk failure. Or > at least apparent disk failure. I have four hard disks connected to my late > model iMac thru a powered seven port USB 2.0 connector. One is the Time > Machine backup disk. Two contain photo files, the last a variety of > miscellaneous files. This week I began to experience a number of random > failures. Disks did not mount, or disappeared from the screen. If the > computer was turned off and then restarted, some disks which had previously > appeared, did not mount. > > I disconnected everything and tried mounting the disks individually on my > laptop. All appeared good. Why the problem on the iMac? The problem seemed > to be in the cables and the connections. The extremely high temperatures > and > high humidity of the last couple of weeks caused some corrosion of the > contacts. They would expand, moisture would get in, corrosion would start, > and the connection would fail. The last time I encountered this phenomenon > on a large scale was with electrical equipment on boats where the salt air > does nasty things to wiring. In the old days, we used gold plated > connectors > but there are few gold plated USB connectors on low end disks. > > My fix so far has been to disconnect and reconnect the cables form the > disks > and the USB ports a number of times in the hope that I can scrape the > corrosion off. It seems to be working so far. But for a more permanent fix, > all I can hope for is cooler weather. > > Larry Z > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information > > -- Tina Manley, ASMP www.tinamanley.com