[rescue] Re: Drive Reliability (was SCSI drive for sale at buy.com)

[Phil Stracchino]

On Sun, Apr 27, 2003 at 05:53:14AM -0700, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> --- Steve Sandau <ssandau at bath.tmac.com> wrote:
> > When I first started my current job, we had a 3/80 that showed that 
> > problem with the 105Mb root drive. I think I even recall a bulletin
> > from Sun or Quantum about it. The official instructions were three
> > steps I believe: first, tap the drive, second unmount it and tap it,
> > third, remount it and drop the whole case about an inch onto the
> > table. I may misremember, but I think that was the solution.
> 
> When I was in college, we had DEC Pro-350's,a nd if the machien
> wouldn't boot, that was the suggested fix - prop up the front edge of
> the machine and drop it about 1" to the table top (not the whole
> machine, just the front edge).
> 
> It worked well.


My "fix" for drives with stiction problems is to open the case without
powering down the machine, detach the drive from the case leaving it
connected to power and bus, and just give it a good quick
snap-of-the-wrist quarter-turn in the plane of the platters.  This
almost always results in a spin-up without having to actually drop
anything.  It doesn't even matter if you spin it in the "right"
direction or not.


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