[Leica] Computer help!!!

[leica at rcmckee.com (R. Clayton McKee)]

Quoth the Brian Reid <reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>:

> One conclusion is obvious: stop buying Maxtor drives. Another 
> conclusion is that there might be something wrong with your electric 
> power, humidity, dust, or temperature. Disks like the same kind of 
> climate that you do.
>
> It is not plausible that an external hard drive will "show up" but 
> have no files on it. I'd take those disks to a responsible computer 
> store and ask them to have a look-see. This is not a job for amateurs 
> computer people.

Actually, I've had this happen several times, so it's QUITE plausible 
to me. It's generally turned out to be a problem with the drive cable 
or connections,
though in a Houston summer it does sometimes seem to be a temperature 
issue. The fact that it's nailing many drives at once here suggests to 
me either an
environmental problem of some sort or quite possibly, again, a cable or 
socket
problem.

When I have HD troubles, before I do ANYTHING I let the system cool all 
the way
down and reseat ALL the internal cabling. 90% of the time that fixes 
it, and on
several occasions it's saved me from turning a hiccup into a total and 
complete
disster. (Yes, I have dust issues. It's a cheap apartment, not well 
insulated,
and the computer desk sits in front of a brick veneer... dust?  You 
might say.)

I keeping spare drive cables and canned air on hand, so when I get 
wierd results
I usually unplug all the drive connections, blow them out well, sometimes
switch to another cable, reconnect everything, making sure it's all seated
well, and then wait for everything to cool down.  Usually the problem 
will cure
itself.  (It's worth noting that in my case this includes dismantling the
external cases and checking THAT drive connection, too.)

I had a drive last week show a bad media descriptor and mismatched 
FATs, and all
KINDS of files lost or corrupted... something like 1800 lost filenames and a
lost cluster count of some obscene number with WAY too many digits.  I killed
Norton before it could rewrite anything, shut down, switched cables, killed
half a can of air, reassembled, waited an hour, and... all fine.  I had to
reinstall Star Office from retrospect because a couple of .dll's were
crosslinked. The HD  -- perfect.  (A Maxtor, BTW.  I run Seagates for
preference, Maxtors if I must, and nothing else.  WD warranty service is 
first
rate, as I have occasion to know.  I've had to USE it way too many times.  
Now
I just buy someone else's drive.)