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Power blip

K

kenglade

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 20, 2008
278
1
Curses.

I'm running Lion on an intel iMac. Have three external drives and two printers.
There was a power blip last night and disaster this morning.

Two of my external drives are not being read (don't show up in Disk Utility) and neither printer is working. Message says printers not connected.

Don't know where to start to fix this problem. One of the disks not showing up is Time Machine. When I go to the TM app it says cannot find disk.

Tried restarting but that doesn't help. All the externals have power but aren't being read.

Internet connection OK and other apps seem to be working. really puzzled by the printers. Tried disconnecting but that doesn't help either.

Never faced a situation like this before.


Any suggestions?
 
Did you try resetting the SMC or resetting the NVRAM?

And what exactly do yo mean by power blip? A surge? A low voltage situation? Spike? Power failure?

Are the external disks/printers self powered or powered by the USB buss? (I assume they're USB) And did you try unplugging the external drives from the computer and replugging them? And, if through a USB hub, have you tried eliminating that as the problem?
 
macthefork said:
Did you try resetting the SMC or resetting the NVRAM?

And what exactly do yo mean by power blip? A surge? A low voltage situation? Spike? Power failure?

Are the external disks/printers self powered or powered by the USB buss? (I assume they're USB) And did you try unplugging the external drives from the computer and replugging them? And, if through a USB hub, have you tried eliminating that as the problem?
Click to expand...

Re Power: I'm not sure how you categorize it. It went off, then right back on. Like beep-beep

Yes, I've tried unplugging the external drives, then replugging. Nothing. Tired plugging them into the back of my computer, but that didn't help.

The blip (or whatever) apparently blew the port on my new Brother printer. been on the phone with them most of the afternoon and they're going to replace it.

No sure about the external drives, though. At one point, icons for two of the three showed up on my desktop, but they are now gone. One I couldn't get to respond was my Time Machine.

What a mess. Haven't tried my online backup but assume it's OK since no problem with internet connection.

I appreciate your help.
 
kenglade, not sure what to tell you about your hardware issues, but I highly recommend you invest in a UPS before it happens again.
 
Power blips can wreck any electronics connected. Did you have a surge protector or a UPS?

Quite possible lots of the equipment is fried. Disk drives can easily be messed up by power jumps. I have my external HDDs connected to a UPS - that has saved them more than once.
 
I have a Cyberpower CP1500PFCLC sine wave UPS for my iMac, and a Cyberpower CP1500AVRLCD simulated sine wave UPS for my wireless router, switch, and two NAS boxes for this very reason. Having a power loss quickly followed by power restoration is generally far worse than a simple loss of power. Like the printer port, it's likely that you have some more fried equipment.

I say spend 1 to 2 hundred and get a quality UPS, but even a $60 UPS would have likely prevented this from happening.
 
WilliamG said:
kenglade, not sure what to tell you about your hardware issues, but I highly recommend you invest in a UPS before it happens again.
Click to expand...

Also recommend this to anyone who doesn't have a UPS. Learn from kenglade's lesson.
 
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