[colug-432] What causes electronics to expire?

[Rick Hornsby]

Tin whiskers?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy)

[Microscopic] dust getting places it shouldn't while the device is stored because of cheap manufacturing and loose tolerances? 

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 13, 2012, at 11:31, 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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