BACKUP Rises Again

As you can see in my previous post, I have a box named BACKUP in my home network. Originally it was an old HP mini-tower. It was so old that it was a hand-me-down from my mother! I loaded Windows XP Pro on it and put a 250 GB Western Digital in it. I mounted it as \\BACKUP\FILES.

The problem was that \\BACKUP\FILES kept disappearing. When it did, even restarting the box didn't remedy it. I'd have to drag the box out of the closet (remember how I like to run systems headless) and open the case and wiggle all the cables. Then it'd go through this "No operating system found" routine until it'd all work again. I'd button it up and back to the closet it'd go.

This got old after the second time so I looked for alternatives. I figured it had something to do with the IDE controllers on the old HP. I had an old ThinkPad 600E and a USB/IDE enclosure but the ThinkPad didn't support USB 2.0. I found this on BuyExtras.com for $12.95 and I had a port replicator for the 600E that had an Ethernet port.

Now the 600E is BACKUP. Unfortunately, I'm still having problems with the Western Digital. I wonder if it is the way I have it jumpered. I hope that's it. It'll run for a day or two and then just disappear.