Interesting PogoPlug E02 failure

[lgrant]

I just had a power supply failure on my PogoPlug E02 NAS server. It has been running for over a year, and when I moved it to a new location and turned it on, nothing happened; no light or anything. I opened up the case, and the power supply looked like this:

http://www.lynngrant.com/badpowersupply.jpg

From the powdery deposits on the two capacitors, as well as the end of the resistor to their left, it looks like the capacitor in front blew up.

After I replaced the PogoPlug with one of my spares, it would not recognize the hard drive. Plugging or unplugging the USB cable caused no change, and no messages in the log. On a hunch, I moved the hard disk to a new enclosure. After that, it worked like a champ. Apparently when the power supply blew up, it fried the USB front-end circuitry in the disk enclosure. Luckily, it did not hurt the disk at all.

My NAS is now happily working again, and the old PogoPlug and disk enclosure are happily in the electronics recycling bin.

Best regards,

Lynn