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From: stevena@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Steven Alexander)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Hard Drive that Wouldn't spin--reprieved
Message-ID: <10170@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 13 Jan 91 09:59:07 GMT
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: stevena@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Steven Alexander)
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 27

My Seagate 251-1 froze on me: I could tell that the reason for the error
on boot-up was that it wasn't spinning.  I took it to a seemingly competent
repair place--but then again how would I know.  They told me that
indeed, it was dead.

While shopping for a new one, I tried to see if I could make it spin.  After
reseating the cables (on the theory that the repair people didn't know what
they were doing, even a little bit) without positive result, I decided to
invade the clean environment of inside the case and see if I could get it
spinning.

It's spinning now.  I just gave it a push with some gratuitous application
of finger oils to the outer edge, and closed it up.  It's now held closed
by a rubber band, since I wasn't sure it was going to be worth the effort to
close it carefully, and booted (successfully) with it just resting closed.
I'm now on my first session with the revived disk, sitting on top of the
open case.

Of course, the drive was well out of warranty when I did this.

Is there any way I can increase the chance of lengthening its life, now
that I've broken the seal.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Steven Alexander
Comp Sci grad student                         stevena@cory.berkeley.edu
& non-practicing lawyer extraordinaire
{I'm really wonderful at not practicing}