[wplug] OT - word of warning on Maxtor 250GB drives

[Drew from Zhrodague]

> Actually - I do have lousy power here in Hooterville - so every PC and
> laptop (and TiVo) are on a conditioned UPS.  As far as power supplies -
> nope, every machine I have runs an Antec.  Of course, I have no control
> over the quality of the power in the little USB housings that I have, so
> that's certainly a point of possible contention, and something I've
> discussed with my coworkers.  I'm now switching to a standard PC power
> supply and one of the little USB "cable heads" that allows for USB
> connection of IDE drives.  We'll see how that works.  However I have
> already learned that if you connect one of those little things and are
> off by one pin on the edge connector you will smoke both the adapter and
> the USB port it's plugged into..... in quite spectacular fashion I might
> add....

 	The place I live in on the SoSide has ancient fuses, and the 
bathroom lights flicker when I print with my laser printer. As such, I was 
lucky enough to score a bunch of UPSs from my last contract, and that at 
least makes me feel safe (UPSs also do power conditioning, as I understand 
it). Good to see you look at all aspects of your environment.


> All my drives are kept in open air where possible as they all get
> cooking hot during this process.  Those that are in PeeCees are cooled
> adequately.  The Seagates aren't bad, but the Maxtors get SMOKIN' hot.

 	Yah, my maxtor 7200RPM jobs get real hot too. My latest problem 
occured when I tried to allocate far more memory than I actually had in 
the system (.5G vs req 5G), and left it thrashing for a whole week on the 
job.

 	I've had luck with generic white-labels, anyone else?

-- 

Drew from Zhrodague		http://www.WiFiMaps.com
drew at zhrodague.net		http://www.zhrodague.net