Sunday, August 12, 2007

Ants in Harddisk

This was a few weeks ago ..

One fine morning i saw a line of ants entering my external hard disk through the gap between the USB port and the plastic around it. Oops .. seems like my external hard disk has become a new ant hole.

Sometimes i do eat while watching a movie or reading on google reader. May be i would have spilled some food on the table cloth on which the laptop and external hard disk were placed. The food got the ants and they saw my hard disk and thought it is a great place to stay than the ant hill in the walls. So they made a move. I guess i caught them while they were shifting houses.

Now that scared me a little bit. What are ants doing inside my harddisk ? I also checked the laptop for any ants and found some inside the battery holder of the laptop. Then i cleaned the place and put my hard disk and laptop in direct sun for sometime to get rid of the ants. Then brought it back and killed the ants if any came out of the disk and laptop. I guess they did not like the laptop location much. The laptop was cleansed of the ants.

I opened the casing of the external hard disk, the components inside were packed very tight and i would have to disturb the circuitry if i dismantled it. I could not see any more ants around, they were hiding somewhere deep near the circuitry. So i kept the disk in sun for short duration over the next few days and killed the ants which came out. This continued for a week or so, finally they stopped coming out. I guess there were no more.

I still dont know how the ants survived for over a week without a supply of food. Did they eat anything in the hard disk ? But my hard disk still runs just fine. Otherwise my hard disk would have stopped working due to (real) bugs (are ants bugs ?) not software bugs ..

So food items are a complete no no near the laptop. Always ensure that you cleanup the eating place after your meal.

Sad that i had to kill the ants !!

2 comments:

Bijesh said...

ant killer!!! :)

wat makes you think they din't get out to get food?

Unknown said...

coz they survived without food and water for over a week .. unless they were sneaking in and out .. :-D