Paul E Condon put forth on 4/11/2010 4:40 PM: > All of the computers are hand-me-downs. None have eSATA capability. So > far I have not convinced myself that spending money would help solve > the problem. Perhaps in a few years, computers with eSATA will start > showing up in dumpsters. Maybe I should just wait.
Hand-me-downs aren't well known for their reliability, especially if they weren't, ahem, treated/handled properly during the decommissioning process. If these external USB hard drives were new-in-box, I'd suspect the USB cables/interface more than I would the new drives. I assume you've swapped the USB cables? If you're powering the external USB drives via the USB cable, DON'T. Plug in the wall wart transformer to power the drives. You could be having issues with dirty/insufficient power on the USB cable to the drive. Have you purchased and installed a ~$10 PCI USB 2.0 card, loaded the drivers, and tested the reliability of the drives with the PCI USB card? If not, I'd recommend that as your next step. -- Stan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/4bc28212.90...@hardwarefreak.com
