Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: greg@johnny.cs.unlv.edu (Greg Wohletz)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: SPARCstation internal disk lossage
Keywords: No Digest Subjects in Unmoderated Mode
Message-ID: <2923@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 4 Jun 91 18:40:00 GMT
Sender: news@brchh104.bnr.ca
Organization: Sunspots, Psuedo-Unmoderated
Lines: 26
Approved: sun-spots@rice.edu
X-Original-Date:    Mon, 06 May 91 15:51:45 -0700

>there is a known problem that can cause
>internal disks in Sun workstations to die after being turned off!  The
>multimedia/graphics group has been bitten twice by this in one week.
>
>The problem has to due with the internal lubricant in the drive drying
>out.  When the disk is turned off, it can't be started again.
>
>If you've experienced the aforementioned problem, I'd appreciate hearing
>from you.  It's always wise to have good reasons for nuking your local Sun
>office.  Thanks, in advance, for your assistance.

Yes, we have had no less than 5 different drives fail in this manner.
We have found that if you turn the machine off and leave it alone for a
week or so, the drives sometimes start working again!

Why just last weekend our building had a scheduled power outage that
resulted in another dead drive.

We heard a rumor that the failure had something to do with high humidity...

Since we have around 35 sparcstation 1s with these stupid drives in them we
are VERY interested in finding a solution to this problem.


						--Greg