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From: dave@micropen.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Seagate 4051 woes
Message-ID: <168@micropen>
Date: Tue, 31-Mar-87 17:52:01 EST
Article-I.D.: micropen.168
Posted: Tue Mar 31 17:52:01 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 2-Apr-87 02:11:44 EST
Organization: Micropen Direct Writing Systems, Pittsford, NY
Lines: 30
Keywords: head crash ARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

I have two systems with Seagate 4051 hard drives.  Both drives
have increased noise from within the drive that is not unlike
bearing noise.  I took one machine down and took it to my local
clone-home.  They took the drive out, cleared the circuit boards,
and removed a fair amount of gunk from the brake.  No more noise.
Problem solved, no?!  No.  The drive hangs in boot.  A scan of
the surface (using Ontracks Disk Manager) shows no less than
*65* bad sectors, one of which being my boot track.  Basically,
a lot of head's 2 and 3 cylinders are shot.  I remember vaguely
people discussing noisy drives and the infamous Seagate brake.
Could someone refresh me?

Also, the disk manager reports some different bad sectors on 
subsequent runs.  I cannot believe that hard disk errors should 
give different results on different trials.  (Non-deterministic 
computing bothers me--especially when a hard error is defined 
by its being deterministic:  failure 100% of the time.)

My technoids say do a low-level format.  I cannot see how that will
help since PC disks need good boot tracks to work and my boot is
already compromised.  My jist is that they must have damaged the
circuit boards on the disk and that the media is fine.  (No physical
mistreatment was done and 4051s have autopark.)  Anyone care
to confirm, deny, embelish this story of woe?

-- 
David F. Carlson, Micropen, Inc.
...!{seismo}!rochester!ur-valhalla!micropen!dave

"The faster I go, the behinder I get." --Lewis Carroll