Trips to the Toy Store

One thing I can do on my trips to the Bay Area is to make trips to Fry's Electronics. There's no equivalent in the Reno area. (People have said, "But Fry's has stores in Nevada!" I say, "Yes, in Las Vegas." The geographically illiterate, which appears to be about 90% of the people I meet, say, "So?" I reply, "That's like telling me in San Francisco that I can get what I want in Los Angeles." But since statistically, everyone in Nevada lives in Las Vegas, I guess this just doesn't penetrate.) Anyway, this trip I bought a 2 TB external USB3 drive so that I can do more backups more often. (The latest round of trouble with one of my computers having led to some data losses, but as far as I can tell nothing catastrophic.)

To my annoyance, the USB3 drive won't connect as a USB3 device. It connects okay on one of the USB2 ports, although the system warns me that it will work better on a USB3 port, so it can see that it's supposed to be USB3. But when I connect the drive to the USB3 port, it merely sits and clicks without actually spinning up and recognizing the drive. I don't know if this means the drive is defective or that my USB3 ports don't have enough power to run the drive. I'll try the former and exchange the drive for another one before I head home. I hope it's the drive and not my computer.