[Bob in St. Louis]

The power supply arrived today. Low and behold, it's FIXED! 
Bob's got tunes again!!!

Whooo hooo!

Thanks for the support and words of wisdom fellas. Very much appreciated.  aa

Bob

[mgalusha]

Very good news indeed! Also good that they came through for you. 

[Bob in St. Louis]

Yes Mike!
I was worried about them coming through for me as I had a little bit of a fight a few months ago. When I originally purchased the unit, the enclosure arrived dented. It almost got "messy". But after a few weeks, they made good on the sale. I thought for sure I was going to be in for another fight this time. Despite their written disclaimer that the buyer must pay shipping (both ways) for any reason, they mailed this power supply to me at no charge. And in amazing time too!
The level of customer service (this time) would be a "10".

Bob

[Wayne1]

So, Bob.

Are you going to get a back up for your back up now? 

[Bob in St. Louis]

Are you going to get a back up for your back up now? 

dammit man.......With the RAID, I didn't think that was going to be necessary.
But yea, I've learned my lesson.
I'll have a back up for the back up for the back up for the .......

Jezz..... 

Bob

[JEaton]

Man, I'd sell that thing.  You have two drives right now.  If you put them both into USB enclosures (or mount the main one internally if your computer is a desktop and the other one in an external enclosure), then you could use one as the main library drive and one for the backup.

Safest thing, though, would be to buy a third drive and copy the library to it for the main working disk.  Then break the mirror in the RAID enclosure by removing one drive.  The RAID set _should_ still be good, so at this point you still have two good copies of the library.  Place the drive you removed into a good USB enclosure, reformat it, and then backup your main disk to it.  Now you have three copies.  You can do whatever you lke with the RAID enclosure and the disk within it.

[srb]

The fact is though, that your data was still intact.  I would have guessed it was a RAID controller chip failure or a USB chip failure.  The power supply failure took me by surprise.
 
Because they diagnosed it without seeing the unit leads me to believe that power supply failure was a fairly common problem with that unit.
 
Steve

[Bob in St. Louis]

Steve - Yes, the power supply (PS) fixing the unit took me by surprise as well. As I mentioned before, the DC cable from the PS looks like an s-video cable. I assume one of the wires was "in charge" of feeding the harddrives (HDD), one wire was for the cooling fan, and one for the power indicator light. I realize that's over simplifying the operation, but I suppose you all get the point. But needless to say I was very surprised to hear their suggestion that the PS could be faulty when so many other aspects of the enclosure could still be operational. I even questioned them about that option and they replied by saying, "Yes, it's still feasible. We'll send you a new one".
So yea, maybe they've had some problems with the PS units.

Eaton - The enclosure was something like $70, so in the grand scheme of things, it's a very inexpensive item given the big picture of what's at stake here. That being said, I'm not quite ready to dump it. BUT... THAT being said, I do think another separate "back up to the back up", as Wayne called it, might just be in order. A 1TB drive is like $100 now days, which isn't too pricey. It'll be a while before I'm willing to make that kind of financial expenditure for a "triple back up" though. I've got too many other projects that a C-note would be better spent on.
But....(yea, another "but"....), there are some cheap USB to SATA adaptors that are extremely cheap and might be good for monthly or bi-monthly back ups to the main HDD. I could put one of the drives internal and use the second one for the USB back up as you mentioned. I'd have to see if my PC would allow such an idea first.

I would be very interested in hearing what the rest of you are doing with regard to "back ups to back ups". Or how you're safeguarding your music.

Bob

[JEaton]

I would be very interested in hearing what the rest of you are doing with regard to "back ups to back ups". Or how you're safeguarding your music.

My ~2000 album library currently fits on a 750GB drive, though I'll probably outgrow that in a few months.  I have a dedicated file server in which a single music library drive is mounted. Another 750GB drive is mounted in a USB enclosure (~$35).  I do monthly backups to the USB drive using Microsoft's robocopy.  If I add a lot of new CDs in a particular month I may do an extra backup or two.  The backup drive is kept powered off between backups.  Sometimes (when I remember) I take the drive and its power supply to my office and keep it there between backups.

What's lost if the main disk dies before I've had a chance to backup the new rips isn't really data, but the time it would take to rerip the CDs added in the interim.  When I was ripping disks every day when first ripping the whole library, I did a backup up every other day or so.

[Jon L]

But....(yea, another "but"....), there are some cheap USB to SATA adaptors that are extremely cheap and might be good

Glad it worked out this time, but you really don't want USB-to SATA adaptors.  What you need is internal SATA to external e-SATA adapter, so you can use any e-SATA enclosure for backups.  These things cost like $7-8...

http://www.computervideogear.com/sata/external-sata-esata-adapter.htm

[Bob in St. Louis]

Good info guys, thank you. 

Jon - That adapter looks pretty neat, and for the price you can't beat it. I understand the PCI to internal SATA, but you'd still need a cord from the PCI to the drive, right? So, the bottom line is that you'd have a "naked" HDD laying next to your PC, correct? I'm not objecting to that, just clarifying. Looks interesting.

Bob

[Jon L]

Actually, I have this one:



http://www.buy.com/prod/cavalry-1tb-dual-interface-usb-2-0-esata-external-hard-drive/q/loc/101/205986373.html

I bought it under $100 while on sale, and it comes with the sata/e-sata adapter as well as sata cable to connect to computer.  It's got USB, too, if you want, and it comes with quality Western Digital 1 TB Green Drive. 

[Bob in St. Louis]

Ohhhh.....I see what you're doing now. Ok, gotcha, I understand.
$120 will have to wait for another day (the $10 PCI I'd have done immediately).
Cool stuff. Thank you Jon.

Bob

[Mr Content]

Hey Bob better get a mac.

Mr C

[Bob in St. Louis]

Hey Nig!
You know, I've actually given very serious consideration to a Mac being my next computer.
The day this Dell dies, I'll be asking for advice on what I should get. I know this HDD episode doesn't have anything to do with Windows or Microsoft, but I've had about enough of these "glitches" with the four PCs running in this house. It's getting old.
Maybe it's time I start lurking in the Mac Circle. 

Bob

[nathanm]

I don't know if Windows machines can do this or not, but what I do is schedule my Mac to boot up while I'm at work and run the backup software to copy stuff to the external firewire drive.  Unfortunately I also use the backup drive for other stuff, so it's always on when the computer is on.  Maybe not a good idea.  I suspect leaving it on only during backups will improve the MTBF.  Maybe an AC timer isn't a bad idea either, so the cheap ass power supply isn't cooking 24\7.  Hmmm.  Scheduled start and shutdown is one of my favorite features of a Mac.