[Leica] Disk failure?

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

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