Getting a replacement power supply for Western Digital external drives - easy as pie

I very rarely get to actually praise a company for doing something beyond my expectations of service so here goes.

I've owned a 500GB WD Elements external hard drive for a little more than a year, and it stopped working about a month ago. I suspected the power supply was faulty, because I would plug it in, it would light up for half a second, then die out.

I was running out of disk space on my computer so I finally got around to looking for all the paperwork for it to make a warranty claim - the receipt, the warranty documents, etc. I went online, registered the product, adjusted the warranty dates by sending them a photo of my receipt, since there were a few weeks between the time of manufacture and the time of sale.

Then I rang Western Digital support and told them about my problem. The conversation went something like this:

Me: I've got a problem with the power supply of my external hard drive. It lights up for a moment after plugging in then goes out.

WD support: So what is the plug for your power supply. Is it 5-pin or something else?

Me: 5 pin. (I'd read on their support site that models made after sometime in 2008 used a different power supply and pin)

WD support: Okay, give me your name and address. You should get it in about two weeks.

Me: Do you need my registration number, or the model of hard drive I have.

WD: No, it doesn't matter what size of drive, it's just the plug that's different.

So they didn't even check if I actually had a registered drive. I could have been anyone or the item could have been out of warranty and would still have received a replacement power supply! Not that I'm complaining. Probably the chances of people doing that are quite unlikely anyway, so they decided to simplify the procedure.

The power supply arrived yesterday, Friday, 6 March. It was sent by FedEx from Singapore on 3 March. No questions, no rego check, no hassles. Just send it out when requested. WD support are f*king excellent!

Problems connecting to WiFi from 24" aluminum iMac

I finally solved my problem connecting to my wireless router. I couldn't believe that I was having more luck connecting to my neighbour's unsecured WiFi connection than to my wireless modem/router (a Billion 7300G) in the same room.

My wireless setup was:

Channel 6
WPA-PSK
Encryption: AES

Now all along I was thinking it was one of these reasons:

1. the Airport card was faulty
2. it was an OS X config problem - WPA2 encryption-related
3. it was a Leopard problem

Now I was really hoping it wasn't #1, because it would have been a royal pain in the ass to try and send back a 9kg computer in the mail. It didn't seem likely because I was able to connect to my neighbour's wifi network without problem. Which leads us to #2 - well, no way was I going to leave my connection unsecured, but just to test out this theory, I turned off the wifi security for a while. And for a couple of times it worked - I could connect to the network and use a browser, etc. Until it stopped doing it.

The last one was #3, and I was all ready to update to 10.5.1 - but I remembered that when I first set up my wireless connection I was using Channel 1. I moved to Channel 6 because I was getting some trouble connecting from the Powerbook downstairs. So I hooked up the iMac to the router, changed to Channel 1, unplugged from the router - voila! all working!

I later found a forum posting (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1822533#1822533) which claimed that Apple engineers had mentioned a conflict between Bluetooth and Channel 6 on wifi. Looks like that was the problem I was having. Bluetooth is on by default, so I turned it off. But I haven't changed the router back to Channel 6. I figure it's better to leave things alone once they work!

Solution to Problem:

4. change wireless channel from channel 6 to channel 1. In some cases Channel 6 conflicts with Bluetooth. So either turn off Bluetooth or stop using Channel 6.

Magic hex numbers

So rumour has it there's this magic code that's kinda like that video in The Ring. Post it on your blog and then seven days later, your blog will dieeeee!

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5b D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

....click

...DROPPED CARRIER

Setting up Airport Extreme to use WPA-Personal on a Powerbook G4

I've been trying for quite a while, but not really hard enough, to set up my Powerbook to use WPA instead of WEP for its wi-fi connection. I finally got it working!

1. Enable ESSID Broadcast on your wireless modem. Restrict the clients that can connect to your network by setting up a list of allowed MAC addresses.

On the modem's Wireless settings, the "ESSID Broadcast" field must be set to "Enable". I found that whenever this was Disabled, I would get the error on my Powerbook when I tried to create a new Network entry:

"The wireless network [network name] does not support the requested encryption method."

This error occurs even if I entered the correct WPA key.

If you really want to turn ESSID Broadcast off, you can still do so by first connecting from your Powerbook while ESSID Broadcast is enabled. Then after that, you can go into your modem's settings and set it back to Disabled.

However, if you turn Airport off, or lose the connection to the network, you won't be able to go back unless you re-enable ESSID Broadcast.

A better way of ensuring no one else connects to your wireless network is to set up a list of allowed clients. In my modem, I went into Wireless Client Filter settings and put in the MAC address of my Powerbook's Airport card. Set the "Filter Action" to "Allowed".

In OS X, you get this value by using Network Utility. Click on the Info tab, then copy the values listed in the Hardware Address field.

Note that my modem is a Billion - BIPAC-743GE. I don't know if this fault/feature is specific to Billion modems or my model. For any other modems, YMMV.

2. On your Powerbook, ,make sure you WPA key is in ASCII and is 63 characters long

I'd previously tried creating Network entry using a shorter WPA key and it didn't work. I kept getting a message "There was an error joining the Airport Network [network name]"

(2.5 hours later)

Shit. I went into my modem settings and tested the above statement, and entered a shorter phrase for testing. I then entered the same values in my Powerbook. Tried to connect and it failed.

I then entered the original values in the modem, saved the settings, then restarted it. Did the same on the Powerbook, changing the password in KeyChain. Didn't work. Network Utility crashed continuously. Re-entered the values a couple of times. No dice.

Then I connected the Powerbook via Ethernet cable, and turned Airport off. Browsed a few pages. I disconnected the cable, then turned Airport back on. It was working, and selected the default network that I had set up.

So what was the actual problem? I have no idea. Maybe some magic gremlin in OS X feels happier when it detects an internet connection via Ethernet, then decides to let WPA work. Aaaargh!

I could have saved two and a half hours of my life by just disabling security or going back to using WEP, since I'd already restricted the wireless clients anyway.