Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!gatech!psuvax1!psuvm!kdm101
From: KDM101@PSUVM.BITNET (Kevin Maher)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 251 Wierdness (summary)
Message-ID: <89202.002238KDM101@PSUVM>
Date: 21 Jul 89 04:22:38 GMT
References: <962@hydra.gatech.EDU> <20621@cup.portal.com>
Distribution: na
Organization: Penn State University - Center for Academic Computing
Lines: 23

A question.....I would like to know how old the drives are that all of
you are having problems with.  I have a ST-251-0 also, and had the same
troubles that were mentioned in the articles here (the stuck heads, failure
to spin up to speed.)  The drive is just over 2 years old. In fact, it failed
almost exaclty 2 years after purchase.  I have since got it functional again,
and have not had a problem in the week since (exaclty 1 week today).  The
problem that caused it to fail (back in March) was the head mechanism freezing
up.  All I did to get it functional, and this was just stabs in the dark, was
to manually move the head servo motor just to see if it would move. ok, it did.
I then removed the PC board from the drive (I think there were 3 connectors.)
and then cleaned the brass contact strip for the platter motor and made sure
it would have good contact when put back.  when I re-installed the drive,
I discovered that it was functional again, but I had lost all the data on it.
(that was from my attemts at low-level formatting it when it first crashed)
I have no idea if this might help somebody out there, but just try it...you
wont lose anything but some time if you just take the board off and visually
inspect it and make sure all connections are tight. I have heard that Seagate
has since made improvements to the connections/wires from the board to the
motors/servos.  However, I've lost faith in seagate products, and in the
future, I will buy some other brand (Possibly Miniscribe - hear anything bad
about them? I'd like to know)

                             Kevin Maher, computer lab tech - Penn State York