[PLUG] Testing a surge protector -- was Finding and mounting a second SATA drive

[Richard C. Steffens]

On 04/07/2012 01:26 AM, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> The most likely failure for the system power supply is the
> electrolytic capacitors at the output - cheap ones fail,
> and the output can spike.  If the power supply is dusty,
> the electrolytics can fail faster.  If the supply gets hot,
> electrolytics can fail faster.  A power surge can kill the
> supply dead, but it is hard to imagine it making it through
> complex electronics to spike the outputs.

The machine was about six years old. Does what you just described 
suggest that it would be a good idea to blow the dust out of a power 
supply -- and perhaps the rest of the box -- once every so often? The 
box sat on a board on the carpet the floor. It does get dusty down 
there. My wife's new machine is a rather small Lenovo box that sits on 
her desk under a riser on which her monitor sits. It should be less 
dusty up there.

> This is a reminder to me to move my backup drives onto a
> different power supply than the main drive.  They used to be,
> then I got lazy.

Odd thing. My wife and I have been using each other's machines for 
backup purposes -- at least I have. She thought she was putting some 
stuff on my machine when she was actually putting some stuff in a 
directory on her machine that I used for backups. I'm thinking I need to 
add one of those network storage boxes to our home network so our 
backups won't be on either machine. As mentioned yesterday, I have my 
USB drive, which I keep disconnected. But disconnected means it takes an 
extra step to do the backing up, and I'd like to make it simpler for 
her. Alas, she also insists on using MS Word and Express Scribe for her 
transcribing work; she doesn't like LibreOffice and the transcription 
program I'm using. So, a networked box that Win7 can talk to will be a 
requirement.

-- 
Regards,

Dick Steffens