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From: gsteckel@vergil.East.Sun.COM (Geoff Steckel - Sun BOS Software)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: HD will not spin up (sometimes), banging it helps; Suggestions?
Summary: move those heads around
Keywords: spinup heads
Message-ID: <3138@jaytee.East.Sun.COM>
Date: 31 Oct 90 19:04:47 GMT
References: <1447@pedsga.UUCP> <26953@cs.yale.edu> <0!8%_**@rpi.edu>
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Reply-To: gsteckel@east.sun.com (Geoff Steckel - Sun BOS Software)
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Organization: Omnivore Technology, Newton, Mass. (617)969-3448
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A number of winchester disk manufacturers have experienced the
`heads stuck to platter' problem - I've observed it on two,
and several friends have seen it on others.  Names removed to
protect the guilty.

Cure:  keep the heads moving.  On my systems using Seagate drives
(since these are ones on which I have >personally< observed the problem)
I have a background program which reads a random block every minute
or three.  This ensures that the heads move around.  Since I installed
this program on my machines, I've had no stuck heads problems.

A FE from a major manufacturer first described this problem as he
was installing the upgrade to my 14" Mega-mega-disk which implemented
the random seeks in the drive firmware.

Note: the Adaptec 1542A SCSI BIOS >>apparently<< does something of
this sort.  Any disks connected via this host adapter occasionally
chatter for otherwise unknown reasons.

I hope this helps.
	geoff steckel (gwes@wjh12.harvard.EDU)
			(...!husc6!wjh12!omnivore!gws)
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Sun Microsystems, despite the From: line.
This posting is entirely the author's responsibility.