Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brchh104!brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: martin@knightsbridge.media.mit.edu (Martin Friedmann)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: Re: Incredible rumor about SPARCstation internal disk lossage
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Message-ID: <3135@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 4 Jun 91 18:40:00 GMT
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Organization: Sunspots, Psuedo-Unmoderated
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Approved: sun-spots@rice.edu
X-Original-Date:    Sun, 12 May 91 19:51:44 EDT

jaf@inference.com (Jose A. Fernandez) writes:

> Has anyone experienced the following problem?

hugh@slee01.srl.ford.com (Hugh Fader) writes:

> The technician's first attempt at a fix was to pull out the offending disk
> and bang on it with a telephone receiver.

Yes...  I too will verify this...  The 100 MEG maxtor drives can stick when
powered down.  We had one which wouldnt spin up...  At first, I thought
that the disk was a goner.  We were planning on throwing it on the heap.
So I opened the drive, breaking the seal, what the hell, and started 
fiddling with it.

People around the lab started staring into it as it was the first time that
we had seen the internals of a sun hard drive.  People went as far as to
fake "getting" dust particles into it and fake spitting into it.

But miraculously I booted the sparcstation while holding the open disk
drive in my hand watching the heads seek back and forth.

I "resealed" the drive and put the machine back together and it all still works
to this day!!!

This happened to another of our drives, making the stats

2 drives frozen for a total of about 3 instances of frozen drive
in one year of "normal" power cycles for 6 machines with about 10 drives
total...

Marty.