"Smart" Meters made them sick

[clare]

Quite possible the drive just calved by itself without external input??

[gfretwell]

Has anyone actually seen a drive with a virus clobbered firmware? I think if I see a corrupted drive I am thinking deer, not unicorn.

[harry]

Only the drunks.

[harry]

:

are creeping back to $4 a gallon.

white men manipulating the gas prices.

The prices of all fuels are linked. If the price of one rises, the others will follow.

[harry]

te:

s are creeping back to $4 a gallon.

d white men manipulating the gas prices.

A fixed amount. There is no limit on sunshine.

[Stormin Mormon]

Not likely, as I lost three drives on the same day.

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

.

Quite possible the drive just calved by itself without external input??

[Attila Iskander]

# # A fixed amount. There is no limit on sunshine. #

Only true if you ignore the limits on the output of the sun and the amount of surface area available to capture it,

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per [e-mail]:

If you have it.... that was the point about having multiple copies and keeping some of them where I cannot get to them in the heat of the moment.

[trader4]

Or the cost and life of whatever it is that turns the sun into useful energy. harry doesn't understand that part of the equation.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Pete C.:

I like it.

Instead of the fire safe, I stash one copy in the garden shed and another in my car.

Gotta wonder how many people lost all copies of their backup to Sandy.

[trader4]

I wouldn't bet on that. How do you talk to something when there is no one home? The drive has to have enough valid firmware to enable it to recognize commands. If you screw with that, I don't ee how you're going to get new code into it with the drive in a normal PC. I would think it would then require connecting to the drive with a special programming adapter of some kind to put the code into it, if that is even possible.

You would think that the drives would be built so that the firmware could not be changed. But apparently according to that previous post citing a drive manufacturer, it is theoretically possible to screw with the firmware. Now that he's told the world it's possible, it's probably raised the level of interest for hackers.....

[harry]

.

te:

And you don't understand that fossil fuels are a finite resource.

[trader4]

...

rote:

om

I understand that perfectly well. And just like we went from walking, to the horse, to the steam engine, to the locomotive, to cars, to airplanes, etc., the free market is perfectly capable of making that transition. It will happen over time, when it's economically feasible. What I object to are pinheaded hippies, who know nothing about technology, deciding to print money and hand it out to what they think is a good idea. Case in point, Solyndra and all the others that have sucked up billions of Obama handouts and gone bankrupt, without producing anything.

[Attila Iskander]

# # And you don't understand that fossil fuels are a finite resource. #

Are they ? On what do you base this claim ??

[gfretwell]

I would worry about that when it actually happens. In the mean time I will assume drives crash on their own and deal with my data that way. Drives are consummables anyway

[chaniarts]

everything, including the sun power, is a finite resource.

[Stormin Mormon]

So, you think that wealthy Democrats are "nothing"?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

.

What I object to are pinheaded hippies, who know nothing about technology, deciding to print money and hand it out to what they think is a good idea. Case in point, Solyndra and all the others that have sucked up billions of Obama handouts and gone bankrupt, without producing anything.

[krw]

He will, even if it means *you* living in a cave. That's the lefty way.

[clare]

I've seen drives fail from bad microcode - but there was no virus involved - and the drives were not field recoverable. The MPG series Fujitsu comes to mind. The earlier Japanese Fujitsu drives were bulletproof. They started building the MPG series in Thailand and the failure rate within warrantee went up to aproxemately 75%, and one year out of warranty closer to 90%. It put Fujitsu out of the desktop computer hard drive business in a rather spectacular fashion.

[clare]

Not the same brand and model from the same batch?? I bought 5 WD black 500gb drives on the same day. 3 failed that day. 2 stayed on my shelf and failed within 3 months - either on installation or shortly after. They were within 100 in production sequence according to the serial number.