The above came to mind as a subtitle, but it seems disrespectful when my insignificant problems are compared to all the suffering currently visited on so many. Instead, modifying a verse taken from the Sound of Music should work:
I must have done something good some no good
The original version of this post was a precautionary tale about failure upon failure, some of them my fault and some not, that brought the home automation system down. I wrote a sequel because of additional problems. There had been a hardware issue before the home automation debacle that I thought I had handled competently. However a subsequent failure proved that such was not the case. Indeed, bad things have accumulated in the last four or five months.
- In mid August, the main SSD containing the operating system of my main desktop computer started to fail S.M.A.R.T. tests.
- In early September, a SATA power harness physically broke down taking the NAS server with it.
- In late October, the home automation system crashed because of a faulty µSD card.
- Just a few days later, the mSATA drive purchased to replace the fault SSD, just died.
- A backup SATA SSD purchased less than a year ago, could not replace the dead mSATA drive because, for unknown reasons, it started to have read/write errors even if it had not been used before.
When it came time to publish the follow-up post, I decided that this litany of woes would not be of interest to others. It was upsetting that days were spent on installing Mint 21.2 on the desktop computer, not once but twice. It was frustrating that restoring the home automation system was considerably delayed because µSD card upon µSD card was not "good enough." It was humbling to admit that the immediate cause of the home automation crash was my code on an ESP8266 module monitoring the status of the garage door. But these are only personal sentiments.
Perhaps these last months have taught me a lesson or two that could be useful to others? I could describe in detail what I think I have learned. However, others have written at length about such problems with pithy advice on avoiding their consequences. I have read many of these accounts, yet I failed to take the necessary precautions. We all believe that we are immune from common problems that afflict others. Why would another such tale from me change anything?
So the best thing to do is to continue putting out fires and rebuilding systems. Hopefully, I can return to more enjoyable tasks in a few weeks or months and then I may have something positive to contribute.
It is said that some revel in the travails of others. If you want to read what may be worthy of a true country & western hurtin' song, here are the links to the original posts:
Epilogue
Both the mSATA drive and the backup SATA drive were under warranty. I decided against trying to get redress for the KingSpec mSATA drive because it contained too much confidential information (passwords, financial records and so on) to pass it on to any party. I did return the SATA ssd to Western Digital and received a new WD Blue SA510 in a sealed retail package with no information about why the old drive failed or anything else for that matter. It was fortunate that WD has a Canadian representative, because I had to pay postage to return the old drive and that was not cheap - almost a third of the cost of a new drive. In all likelihood, it would have been too expensive to return the drive to the US. Nevertheless, kudos to Western Digital for such a quick return right in the middle of the holiday rush.
Currently I am toying with the idea of cloning the boot drive on a regular basis, and switching to the freshly cloned drive after each operation.