Xref: utzoo comp.sys.att:9493 unix-pc.general:5378 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnewsh!hoswjc!wjc From: wjc@ho5cad.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter) Newsgroups: comp.sys.att,unix-pc.general Subject: yet another UNIXpc HD tale Message-ID: Date: 3 May 90 16:52:46 GMT Sender: bill@cbnewsh.ATT.COM Reply-To: wjc@hos1cad.att.com (Bill Carpenter) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 76 Okay, okay. I should have paid closer attention to all those billions of "help me with my hard drive" messages, but I knew it would never happen to me. No, wait, that's not right. In fact, it has happened to me and those nearby often enough that we think it's routine, but we're so woefully hardware-ignorant that we just choose between sending them home under warranty or tossing them out and buying new ones. (No, we don't really toss them out. We use them for curling practice.) This time, though, I've got a broken hard drive on my UNIXpc that is so tantalizingly close to "ok" that I can hardly stand it. Although the drive is under warranty (no sweat), I'd sure like to be able to get my data off it before it goes cross-country. (What do you mean "backups"? What kind of wimp do you think I am? :-) THE EQUIPMENT: Seagate ST-251 UNIXpc has original WD 1010 controller chip THE SYMPTOMS: Failed to boot after a normal powerdown (the famous dancing little boxes). I can boot from the floppy with no trouble. I can also boot the machine from another swapped-in hard drive. From the diagnostics disk, I always get "can't recal, response = 40" no matter what I try. Other disk tests like random seek, nondestructive surface test, etc, all go okay (except that at the beginning they seem to do a recal and report an error for that, then after I hit return, they do the rest of the test with no complaint). If I do a boot from "floppy boot" and do the trick to get a shell prompt, I have no trouble mounting and unmounting the hard drive on /mnt. In fact, when it is mounted, I can read and write whatever I please from it. Yes, friends, I have the full power of UNIX at my disposal :-). THE BEST THING YOU COULD TELL ME: Something like "Yeah, we see that all the time on the 251's. All you have to do is [your solution here] and it will spin like a champ for a couple more months." THE NEXT BEST THING YOU COULD TELL ME: How to get my data off the disk after I've done a floppy boot. As far as I can figure out, I can't use the floppy for anything else after I've booted off it ("filesystem busy"). If there is a way, I'd sure like to hear about it. I also have another UNIXpc within a few feet of the broken one, so if there is a way to solve this puzzle using that, it's there. I couldn't do anything with the serial ports, could I (yes, I know how long it would take). As you can probably guess, neither of these machines has a tape drive nor a second hard drive upgrade. (The latter looks pretty attractive, but this is probably not an ideal time to try building it.) THINGS I'VE ALREADY TRIED THAT MADE NOT MUCH DIFFERENCE: 1. Tightening the screws that hold the hard drive together. 2. Power cycling a bunch of times. 3. Running the "ldrcopy" program from the floppy boot disk. 4. Connecting and disconnecting power and data cables to make sure they're okay. 5. Reseating a bunch of the big chips on the motherboard. 6. Waiting a while. 7. Looking at things really, really hard. YOUR ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS: Will be speedily answered, and you advice will be gratefully received. -- Bill Carpenter att!hos1cad!wjc or attmail!bill