Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!sarah!leah.albany.edu!brk102
From: brk102@leah.albany.edu (Brian King)
Subject: IDE hard drive pauses... sometimes.
Message-ID: <1991Jun13.193634.24680@sarah.albany.edu>
Originator: brk102@leah.albany.edu
Sender: news@sarah.albany.edu (News Administrator)
Organization: State University of New York at Albany
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 91 19:36:34 GMT
Lines: 25

I have an IDE hard drive, a Toshiba 100MB (can't remember the model
number), that seems to pause sometimes, for around 15 seconds, and
then continues.  When I say pause, I mean that it causes my whole
system to completely stop whatever it is doing. The drive light stays
on for about 10 seconds, and then goes off for the remainder of the
time, until the system recovers. It usually never takes more than 30
secs. to fully recover.  When it pauses, it happens in the middle of a
disk read/write.  It doesn't just happen for no reason.  Does anyone
have ANY idea what could be going on?  It can happen at ANY time,
however, it seems to happen more often when I am in Windows.  I am
guessing that a nice low level format would do the trick, (maybe the
interleave is off a little?) but I've heard horror stories about low
level formatting an IDE drive.  Are there any companies out there that
have software for low level formatting an IDE drive? Any tips,
pointers, etc?

Relevant system information:
   386/25 Mhz, 64k cache, 4 megs RAM
   AMI BIOS - 4/89

Thanks for any information you can give me. Send email. I'll post a summary
if interest shows.

-Brian King  (brk102@leah.albany.edu)