[mdlug] Care and feeding of SATA drives

[Ingles, Raymond]

 Back in late July I picked up a ~1TB SATA drive for my system,
primarily intended to store HDV from a new camcorder. Just before the
holidays I began to have problems accessing it, which got progressively
worse until I was rarely able to use it at all. ATA errors and so forth.
I did manage to back up the critical data to another drive, but I
figured I'd need to call in the warranty. Still, SMART showed no drive
problems, even in the extended offline test.

 Before trying to exchange it I opened up the case, replaced the SATA
cable, and reseated the power connector. And... presto. There have been
no problems for over a week now. I'm pretty happy about that. I'll keep
an eye on it for a time, but it really seems to be fixed at this point.

 I can't figure out what could happen to make a SATA cable and/or power
cable to go bad in six months, but that appears to have been the case.
Moral of the story: make very sure to replace/reseat cables *first* when
hardware trouble is suspected.

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                     (313) 227-2317

   "I can't think of a worse way to wake up than discovering
                my head is in a jar." - Tagon
  "Try waking up with your head in a jar and having deja-vu."
                       - Der Trihs.
    - Schlock Mercenary, http://www.schlockmercenary.com/

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