Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!dg49+ From: dg49+@andrew.cmu.edu (David A. Gillespie) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: External drives destroyed... Message-ID: Date: 19 Jan 90 01:11:17 GMT Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 40 I am having a LOT of problems with external drives. After getting one around Christmas, I found out that it would give me read/write errors on brand new disks. So I took it back and got another one. I went to attach this one, and had the hardest time because when I would turn on the machine, the CAPS LOCK light would start flashing, and the keyboard would be dead. Finally, after getting it to work again, I soon discovered I had the same problem, with an additional twist: after reading the disk for awhile, it would suddenly come up with "YOU MUST replace volume ... in drive 1!!!!!!" or whatever that says. So I took that one back, too. Now I'm on my third drive and last night I had the same problem again, but this time I made sure I know how it happened. It seems that after formatting a disk on that drive (though I don't know if that's significant) and filling it with information, it's fine. The problem shows up when I delete a file and then try to put something else back on it. Then it gives me the "Read/write error on volume ...". Each time I brought back the drive, the dealer found the same problem on his machine. But before I took this third drive, he ran it all day on his system to make sure that there was nothing wrong, yet it has the same problem. At this point, he's blaming my machine. Could my Amiga 500 be causing this problem? If it is, how much is it going to cost me to have it fixed? Just as an aside, before I started using the external drive my printer worked fine, but now, the printhead is about shot. It's a thermal printer, and most of the pins aren't working. Could this be related? By the way (almost forgot), it's an "AIR drive", and the dealer says that they have only had four bad drives within the past sixth months, and I've had two of them. They also say that there was once a bunch of drives in a series that were all bad because they were missing a component, but that other people who have bought "AIR" drives have had no problems. Any help would be much appreciated, as I don't want to fix something that's not broken. Thanks in advance, Dave