June 6, 2008

MyBook Warning

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Those external MyBook drives are hot! And I’m not describing how well they’re selling.

I enjoy those external MyBook hard drives, manufactured by Western Digital. I’ve had good luck with them, having one 320GB and two 500GB models. I use them for my backup drives on three computers (two PCs and the Mac), plus I recommend them highly in my books. (Backup, folks!)

Recently, I’ve been alerted to a problem with the drives: over-heating. The drives have plenty of ventilation in the form of holes on the case. Interestingly enough, the holes are dots and dashes and they actually spell out messages in Morse code. You can visit the MyBook Wikipedia page to read what some of the messages say.

Though they have plenty of ventilation, the drives get hot β€” especially in the summer months when your office temperature might climb into the high 70s or beyond. (That’s over 25ΒΊ for you metric people.) When a hard drive gets too hot, it stops working. It also stops working in an unrecoverable manner. That’s bad.

My advice: First, try to keep your office or computer room cool during the summer months. Avoid placing the external hard drive (and the computer as well) in direct sunlight.

Second, when it gets too hot, turn the drive off. Disable the backup program that you’re running. And, if it’s really hot, turn off Mr. Computer as well. Computers don’t like heat and produce more errors when it’s hot. You can always compute later. In fact, during the summer months I often work only in the early morning and evening (my office lacks air conditioning).

Finally, should an external drive go, don’t freak! It’s a backup drive. Get another MyBook and remember my first two bits of advice. I’ve seen the 500GB MyBooks on-sale for $130 at CostCo. That’s a deal!

Having a backup drive is a good thing. Using it for backup is a better thing. Keep it cool is the best thing.

5 Comments

  1. Howdy Dan!! I still use the awesome information I gained with your Teaches Windows 98 book, and I’m going to buy your latest on Vista, plus the one on getting XP to run better (hopefully), as my old Dell Dimension 8200 with RAMBUS memory is really getting slow. This HP Athlon Dual Core with Vista Home premium is blistering though!!

    I wanted to also thank you for this bit of information, as I have a 1TB HD MyBook external drive for my new HP rig. I try to keep mine off as much as possible, and have a complete backup of my HP Vista OS on it using True Image 11. If I’m not saving or retrieving information from it, I unplug the USB cable. I know, USB is slow to some folks, but it works fine for me.

    Thank you again for all of your wisdom through the years that has made all my family and friends come to me for computer info, and now I’m off to Wikipedia to see what my TB hard drive says in Morse code!! πŸ™‚ Prank/Lenny

    Comment by Prankmonkey9 — June 8, 2008 @ 8:42 am

  2. Curiously, as I read this, my external 500GB My Book, the one I use on this computer for backup, experienced a hiccup. Error -43. I’ll have to look up what that means. Hopefully it’s not serious!

    Thanks for enjoying my stuff!

    Comment by admin — June 8, 2008 @ 9:09 am

  3. Okay. Error -43 is “Target not found.” That means the drive went hinky for a bit. I hope that’s what it means. Sheesh…

    Comment by admin — June 8, 2008 @ 9:10 am

  4. I hope that’s all it means too Dan, I haven’t seen such errors with mine yet, but always be prepared as you say and backup, backup!! πŸ™‚

    BTW, I don’t enjoy your writing and expertise, I love it!! πŸ™‚ Your sense of humor is very refreshing in such a technological world, and I recommend you to all my friends. Without your book 7-8 years ago, I would have been lost, as I’d been into computers for only about 2 years then (I think I’m remembering correctly, a lot of time has went by, and I’m now an old geezer of 42 and the memory ain’t what it used to be because of stupid things I did earlier in my youth).

    Keep ’em coming guru and helping educate this ignorant computer society, as I once was before I read your book and discovered majorgeeks.com, pcmag.com, cnet.com, as well as other online tech forums!! I’m still very ignorant of lots of stuff, but I know fine brains such as your’s will help me learn as long as I listen (Unlike you Hate Mail folks – what some whackos). Prank/Lenny

    Comment by Prankmonkey9 — June 8, 2008 @ 2:55 pm

  5. That should have been Unlike your Hate Mail folks…sorry. Prank/Lenny

    Comment by Prankmonkey9 — June 8, 2008 @ 2:56 pm

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