My apologies if this post is in the wrong section. I haven’t posted since the days of TekSyndicate.
Recently, one of my NAS drives died. It died completely out of the blue and cannot even be mounted in read-only mode. It makes horrible noises and it refuses to communicate with my LSI8211 card. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of using Amazon to purchase the drives. When I plugged in the drive’s SN to Seagate’s website, the SN didn’t come up with a warranty. I’m in communication with Segate ATM, but I suspect they aren’t going to send me a replacement.
It’s beyond me how Amazon doesn’t have pending lawsuits for numerous fake listings and (in my case) listings that contain warranty information that isn’t honored because the product is sold by an unscrupulous 3rd party.
Anyways, aside from my disbelief with the lack of consumer protections in the US, I am somewhat fortunate because I setup the pool with a parity drive. So, I just need to buy another hard drive and slot it in and rebuild the pool (I think? This is the first drive failure I’ve had with my NAS).
I was thinking back to what might have caused the failure. It looks like the drive failed a little less than a week ago. I remember vacuuming around that time. Turning on the vacuum caused the lights to dim for a second or two (in the same room as my NAS). Is it possible that bad power could’ve killed the drive?
I am fortunate enough to live in an area with consistent electricity. I don’t think that I’ve had a power outage in several years. I am a bit tight on cash at the moment, but does anyone have any recommendations for power conditioner? I am not an electrical engineer and don’t have the toolset to determine whether something is snake-oil or not. I was looking at:
If I had a bit more on-hand cash, I would probably just go out and buy a UPS. Anyways, any advice or recommendations is greatly appreciated!
You don’t really need a power conditioner. Any modern PC (Or NAS, etc) switching power supply will take the worst input as long as its somewhat between 100 and 250ish volts and somewhere around 50-60hz and everything will be 100% fine
Its blackouts and brownouts and surges that cause problems. A UPS will help with the first 2 and somewhat the last
Get a surge protector in your main electrical panel, make sure your ground rod and connection is in good shape, and then eventually get yourself a UPS
If you want to go all out like I have, get a double conversion UPS. A double conversion UPS converts the AC power to DC, and back again. So you get “perfect” 120v @ 60hz all the time, no matter what, with no interruptions
It sounds like the vacuum didn’t create a large enough disruption to make it past the power-supply.
Unfortunately, I’m in an apartment at the moment. I checked in the electrical box and there isn’t a surge protector. They probably wouldn’t be happy with me installing something into it either.
I’ll probably wait several months and buy a double conversion UPS. Even though they seem expensive, it’s probably worth it when you have a lot of expensive equipment downstream of them.
That statement is true for most protective/insurance/maintenance type measures. I personally apply the 80/20 (or more 10/1) rule: don’t spend more than a tenth of the value that you’re trying to protect.
e.g. the $20 best-buy surge protector strip if probably fine to protect that $200 usb hard drive. The $200 (not-double conversion) UPS is probably fine to protect that $2,000 computer gear.
When you think about spending $500+ on UPS gear you should be very clear about what you’re protecting and why
