[colug-432] What causes electronics to expire?

[Steve Roggenkamp]

Probably several things.  Warning:  speculation follows.

1. Differential heating could cause cracks to form in the traces.
2. Atoms migrating out of place in semiconductors.
On Dec 13, 2012 12:32 PM, "Joshua Kramer" <joskra42.list at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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