Mark Your USB and Power Cords by Device
I had about 3 years worth of family pictures and videos stored on an external drive. (These things are great for extra storage.) I found a power cord that fit the drive and connected it up and then connected it to the computer. Nothing. The power indicator light on the drive flickered, then wouldn’t come on at all. What could have happened?!
Turns out that just because a cord fits into the little slot does NOT mean that the cord is appropriate for the device. I had picked a cord that was for another device and it allowed too much power to go through! *sizzle*
If I had labeled my cords using a label and a Sharpie pen, (or one of these handy cord tags) I would have been sure to have the right one and not risked losing all my pictures.
So this is my tip of the day! Label all your cords! I already do that for the incredible amount of cables coming out from the back of my computer so I know what cord goes to what, but I haven’t done this for my portable devices. I found out the hard way about not having the correct cord for the correct device. If the external drive cord had a label on it, I wouldn’t have chosen the first cord out of the drawer that fit in the back of my drive.
Do you already label your cords? How do you do that? How do you store your detachable power cords? Share your cord labeling and storage tips with us!
(BTW: I am about to cry over the possibility of losing my pictures. I am hopeful that the folks at my husband’s office can recover the pictures for me. If not, I will have to pay a data recovery service to have a go. Keep your fingers crossed!)
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Comments
LOL Thanks for checking up on me, Pam! Yes, we got the info off the drive. Turns out only the power source was fried. The drive was still intact and I have those pictures all on disk now. *whew*
And it turns out that the drive itself can be physically inserted into my tower so I will have 500mb of extra memory built into my computer.
.. now I’m saving up for a terrabyte external drive! HAHAHAH… (I will definitely mark the cord for that!!)
Oh no!!!!! … I’m so sorry !!! I was going to ask did you do a back up cd of any of the pictures but guess the reason for the external drive was for that purpose.. duh Pam… I know on my old computer anytime I used my external drive for some reason a back up was made on my windows explorer in my C:/ my doc. … my son in law may have set it up that way for me…
Hopefully you will be able to get it restored!
take care !
Pam