Ants...on the Hard Drive.

[gravysauce13]

i'll get straight to the point... it started about a day ago..

ants seem to be attracted to my HDD (a WD Caviar Blue 160GB Internal Drive). but i managed to spot them before they did any REAL damage.

i already cleaned up my room, sprayed bugspray everywhere and cleaned/dusted up my entire rig. right now, i'm still seeing the remaining ants that probably managed to hide in the nooks and crannies of my HD but i'm still getting worried. and they seem to like the silicone seal on the drive too. functionality-wise, everything is kosher..so far.

also, my DVD-ROM is affected, but i sorted that out already by disassembling the damn thing and cleaning off the ants inside.

i keep my case open to allow cooling. (my case is pretty generic. plus the philippine weather ain't exactly cool by any standards.) and its sitting on it's own table well away from my desk, so that rules out food crumbs and stuff.

any way i could avoid 'em next time? and should i be worried about ants breaching the HD's seal? :|



cheers.

 

[dontknownotsure]

make a moat around your pc and teflon coat all cables lol.

 

[alyoshka]

Maybe keeping gravysauce away from the rig would be a start.....
But jokes apart, it maybe the warmth in the rig thats attracting them to it, since, monsoon's are the time when ants usually move to places away from the ground, especially to carry their eggs to a warmer place.
So, I'd suggest if you do eat munchies near the rig, keep that away, and if you want to really get rid of them completely, use isopropyle to clean any sticky stuff inside and outside the rig, it could be attracting them.

 

[monkeysweat]

the best way to get rid of ants is to kill them all with the spray, then wash your walls and floors (mop and bucket), then respray entry ways and around perimeter of room after the surfaces dry. then keep an eye out to see where they are coming in, and do over, may take 3 tries, will have to be diligent with the perimeter spraying to stop them from coming in the house in the first place.

 

[gravysauce13]

jokes aside, i just killed some of the remaining ants scurrying out my HD and onto the rig's table. checking with a flashlight, i don't see any ants anymore but i'm currently monitoring it to make sure.

i used diluted bleach and wiped the floor and lower walls, including the immediate area of my rig after vaccuming it. any ant trails i saw got a liberal application of bleach.
i also gently wiped some 70% isopropyl onto the sides on the HD and on the case itself while i was cleaning each component.

i do eat stuff in front of my desk, but the tower itself is separate from the rest of the setup, so food crumbs are ruled out.

as for the EMF attraction... i did read that somewhere. i just hope all this cleaning i did would make the ants go away.

in any case, the ants won't breach the HD, right? i need some assurance here. lol

 

[mavroxur]

Ants seem to be attracted to EM fields. I have a problem with them getting into outside yard lights. I've seen electric meters and outdoor breaker boxes full of them before too. Spraying and keeping food out of that room is the best option. One household thing i know of that repels ants is cinnamon (from the spice section at the grocery store). A light dusting around the table legs would keep them from getting on the table. People sometimes use it around pet food bowls to keep ants from being attracted to the food. It works great.

 

[gravysauce13]

ants being attracted to EM fields produced by equipment..

dammit, Evolution. lol.

and yeah, i read that cinnamon works like a charm as an ant deterrent too. i may try that.

my room's clear of any ant trails now. bleach helps in clearing those up nicely. haha.

i'll report any updates tomorrow when i wake up. considering that for the past two days every time i wake up, ants were swarming around the hard drive. lol.

i'm just glad they haven't f***ed anything up before i saw them.


cheers, mates.

 

[gravysauce13]

Best answer selected by gravysauce13.

 

[gravysauce13]

UPDATE: i'll try the Cinammon later when i run out of Ant Chalk.

this does wonders too. drew lines of the stuff on my windows, the possible crevices where the little f***ers come out and of course, around my rig and then some. hell, i saw a few ants walk through the lines and dying off after a while. XD

thanks for the suggestions, guys.

 

[mavroxur]

^ I like this suggestion too!

 

[gravysauce13]

the little ah heck might get tangled in the complex net of wires, cables and stuff around my rig. plus, i don't have money for it lol

for me, Chemical Warfare is the answer against the ant menace.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Sounds like your system needs to be debugged.

 

[alyoshka]

Or Nuked?

 

[Max Collodi]

I don't know what the ants are like in the Philippines, but if they're the type that go for sweet things, try this. Get some Terro liquid ant killer. First, try to determine where the ants are accessing the room. Place a few drops on a piece of thin cardboard and leave it in that area. Pretty soon you will have them gorging on the stuff and carrying it back to the nest where they will feed it to Big Mama Ant. The boric acid in the sugar syrup will plug up their insides and they will all die from severe constipation. Not a pleasant way to go, I'm sure. The important thing is not to kill them directly. You need to keep them alive to carry out your mission. It's all wonderfully diabolical.

http://www.biconet.com/crawlers/terroant.html

It may take several days or a few weeks depending on the size of the nest and you may have to replace the liquid as it dries up, but from my experience, it works very well.

---Max

 

[sbpatrick]

Well,ants do kill HDDs.Yesterday my PC suddenly froze and I heard clicking from one of my HDDs.I powered down and checked the HDDs.I saw an army of ants going into my samsung 1TB.They spared my Seagate 500GBs.
Unplugged it and placed it on my desk and waited for those little r****ls to come out for over an hour.Still saw a few on the crevices.
Had to say goodbye to my warranty and removed the PCB.They were going in and out at the point where the HDD head connectors are.

Opened up the HDD and used a hair blower patiently to flush them out.
Closed the HDD and fired it up.It was accessible.Pulled out the critical data with USB-SATA convertor.
Put it back in my PC and the clicking started again.This time it died for good.

Lost about 600gb of movies/mp3s/PDFs along with my warranty.

Ants are a real threat - Beware!!

Patrick

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey