[colug-432] What causes electronics to expire?

[Joshua Kramer]

So as it turns out, the external enclosure in which I had my 500GB drive,
is flaky.

I put the new 1TB drive in this enclosure to use as a backup drive.  I put
the old 500GB drive (that was giving me "can't read sector" I/O errors) on
a small SATA-USB adapter I had.  When I started copying from the old to the
new, the new 1TB drive was giving all kinds of I/O errors.

I hung the 500GB drive off of an internal SATA interface of my PC, and I
connected the 1TB drive to the SATA-USB adapter.  Now, I am copying things
over with no I/O errors.

What's interesting is, for the past 18 months or so I've kept this
enclosure in a cool, dark closet... and I've only moved it once every 1-2
weeks to do backups.  And I only plug it into a UPS-protected outlet.

So I wonder what, barring an external physical event, causes a transistor
or two to work one day, and then the next, say, "you know what?  I've had
enough on/off cycles in my lifetime, I quit!"

Cheers,
-JK
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