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Date:      Mon, 14 Oct 1996 18:50:30 +0930 (CST)
From:      Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
To:        rschof@mccomm.nl (Rob Schofield)
Cc:        scott@statsci.com, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Dead quantum story
Message-ID:  <199610140920.SAA15286@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
In-Reply-To: <199610140856.JAA04715@mccomm.nl> from "Rob Schofield" at Oct 14, 96 09:56:38 am

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Rob Schofield stands accused of saying:
> 
> Sorry about the irrelevancy of this, people, but I couldn't resist....
> ;^)

You get that, but watch it; there are lots of people here with hairy disk
stories 8)

> Actually, on a more serious note: it sounds like a dead spindle
> bearing, which is usually terminal. You can recover from a dead
> controller on the disk by cannibalising another, but when the
> mechanicals go west, you've had it (even if you get the can open to
> look, just opening it will deposit so much large-dimension dust on teh
> surface that you would head crash badly if it ever re-started).

This is just not true.  I would not want to run a disk that I'd breached
for any length of time with critical data on it, but I have and you can,
provided you understand what you're doing, you are very careful, and
very lucky 8)

> I have only successfully once got out of this; I had a Seagate,
> horizontally mounted, do something similar. I took it out of the
> machine and stood it on it's side so the platter was in teh vertical
> plane. This allowed the disk to come up just long enough to get most
> of my data off before I started getting sync and other such errors.

Normally, once you get the disk spinning it will keep spinning; the 
spindle motor just doesn't have the low-rpm torque to get going in
the first place.

I have an old Quantum LP105 with serious stiction; the heads move too
far in to the centre of the disk when parking and get stuck.  The screws
on the top cover have been replaced at least once now because they became
too dog-eared 8).  I've temporarily fixed it with electrical tape, but
I expect that to fail fairly soon & I'm a bit worried about vapour from
the tape adhesive, but the disk was a freebie so who really cares?

> Rob Schofield

-- 
]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au    [[
]] Genesis Software                     genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au   [[
]] High-speed data acquisition and      (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496       [[
]] realtime instrument control          (ph/fax)  +61-8-267-3039        [[
]] Collector of old Unix hardware.      "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick  [[



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