From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Sep 19 23:07:23 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA10848 for hardware-outgoing; Fri, 19 Sep 1997 23:07:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from vinyl.quickweb.com (vinyl.quickweb.com [206.222.77.8]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id XAA10843 for ; Fri, 19 Sep 1997 23:07:18 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from mark@localhost) by vinyl.quickweb.com (8.8.5/8.6.12) id CAA00820; Sat, 20 Sep 1997 02:07:41 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <19970920020741.24668@vinyl.quickweb.com> Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 02:07:41 -0400 From: Mark Mayo To: "Rodney W. Grimes" Cc: Mark Mayo , freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: HD failure; possible causes?? References: <19970919230016.40089@vinyl.quickweb.com> <199709200553.WAA11851@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.81e In-Reply-To: <199709200553.WAA11851@GndRsh.aac.dev.com>; from Rodney W. Grimes on Fri, Sep 19, 1997 at 10:53:19PM -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Fri, Sep 19, 1997 at 10:53:19PM -0700, Rodney W. Grimes wrote: > > Hi all. Well, this weekend I had a couple of CCD disk arrays go belly up, > > and I'm curious if anyone has had any experience with multiple disks > > crashing at once. > > > > Originally I thought one of the disks in the pair had crashed, but when I > > sent the drives to a data recovery place the guy informed me that both > > disks were pooched - both of them had the heads physically touch the > > media, destroying the platters and all data of course. > > Your expert sounds like he is full of B.S. when he says to look at > your motherboard as a possible cause. Plain and simple fact that an > electronic device can not cause a physical failure of a disk drive. It certainly sounded like B.S. to me - glad to hear I'm not the only one who things so. :-) > Vibration, shock, or another physical thing happened here if 2 drives > in the same chassis died at the same time with the same ``heads hit > the platter'' failure mode, no doubt about it in my mind at all. I would tend to agree. The only thing is that this is a rather large chassis locked away in a control room. About the only physical thing that could have shook it would be an earthquake. And trust me, about the only way an earthquake would occur in Southern Ontario is if the Mir space station fell out of orbit and somehow made it in one piece to the surface, impacting just outside my building. In other words, it ain't likely! :-) I'm pretty confident now that the Baracuda started vibrating like savage, and probably had a big hickup as it said its last words. The hickup was big enough to cause the disk above it to throw a hissy fit as well. Bummer. At least this seems most likely - I went and plugged the dead Baracuda in again and it did indeed vibrate enough to jitter across the table on its own... Thanks for the advice, I think you're exactly correct. -Mark > > -- > Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com > Accurate Automation, Inc. Reliable computers for FreeBSD -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Mayo mark@quickweb.com RingZero Comp. http://vinyl.quickweb.com/mark finger mark@quickweb.com for my PGP key and GCS code ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The newest book, The Dilbert Future, took a broader view, describing how idiots will threaten every aspect of business, technology and society in the future." --Scott Adams