On Tuesday 11 September 2018 21:34:27 Felix Miata wrote: > Gene Heskett composed on 2018-09-11 21:21 (UTC-0400): > > Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote: > >> I would first identify the *cause* and replace all unreliable > >> hardware before bothering to restore from backup. If you have > >> noticed some corruption, you likely also have some unnoticed > >> corruption. Continuing to use unreliable hardware wastes your time > >> and endangers your data. > > > > I will 2nd and 3rd Bens advice. Bad cables have been the huge > > majority of such nefarious goings on. Particularly if they are > > bright red and 4+ years old, put a tail on the log, and prod the > > cable gently with a wooden pencil. If the log blows up, bad cable, > > replace it with any color but red. Preferably a month ago... > > IMO, red because it's red is less likely than red because red was the > dominant color of SATA1 cables, not designed for SATA2 or SATA3 speeds > newer hardware is designed to use. IOW, if the cable is red, quite > likely it is speed limited, regardless whether the red dye is exposed > to its conductors.
That red dye, if in contact with the wire, eats it up like some sort of acid, you can literally pour the copper out of the ends where you've cut it in two, onto a clean sheet of paper, as a dark brown powder that looks a lot like rouge. As a C.E.T., I've been battling with the cable failures its caused since the J.A.Pan company took over the two way radio we here in the USA call Citizens band in about 1969 or 1970. That brought with them, the first of the J.A.Pan made microphone coiled cables, all of which had that bright red, almost magenta dye in the wire they used for Push To Talk control. Its average life ranged down to 6 months in some cases. Even the truckers who depended on folks like me to keep them on the air noticed and happily paid 4 or 5x the cost of the J.A.Pan cable, for an American made cable. I'm a retired old fart, be 84 in 3 weeks and I've been chasing electrons for a living and making then do useful work since around 1949, had a 1st phone since 1962, and been a Journeyman C.E.T. since 1972, so don't tell me about red being just a sata-1 slow cable. You can buy them today, with a sata-III blurb on the bag, but it still only lasts 3 to 5 years. Black, tan, blue just fine, and I have these other colors in my other 5 systems, some of which are as old as sata itself, but only one non-red cable has failed. And when cut in two, the wires were fine, but the gold flash on the connectors was gone, or never existed. Cheap cable, came with the last WD drive I ever bought, and the drive itself was gone in less than 10k spinning hours. Seagates? Spin them up and replace them when they are too small for the job. The last one I pulled had 77,000+ spinning hours on it. -- Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
