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From: wfp@dasys1.UUCP (William Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: Need info about ST-238 disk, 2070 controller problem
Message-ID: <417@dasys1.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 17-May-87 23:56:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: dasys1.417
Posted: Sun May 17 23:56:06 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 19-May-87 06:23:15 EDT
References: <3155@ecsvax.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Organization: The Big Electric Cat
Lines: 29
Keywords: Seagate ST-238 hard disk Adaptek 2070 controller problem
Xref: mnetor comp.sys.ibm.pc:4173 comp.sys.misc:594

In article <3155@ecsvax.UUCP>, unbent@ecsvax.UUCP (Jay F. Rosenberg) writes:
> 
> 	I keep running across references to a mysterious problem involving
> Seagate ST-238 hard disks coupled with Adaptek 2070 RLL controllers.  A May
> 11th Infoworld story spoke of a "25 percent failure rate..."
> ...  Since that's precisely the combination I installed in my new clone
> last December, this is getting rather disturbing.
> ...  Is it better to leave the disk
> running 24 hours a day ...
> or to shut it down each night (which sometimes produced symptoms of
> reluctance from the disk upon cold reboot ....

I have had the same configuration on my clone since January, and while I have
not experienced any boot problems, I have found that I must let my system
"warm up" for 10 minutes or so before doing any serious disk I/O.  If I don't
wait, sometimes nothing happens, but at other times (or on certain files),
I get either "disk not ready" or, rarely, "data error" when I try to read.
If I do wait the 10 minutes or so, everything is totally solid.  I wrote a
batch file that copies every file on the disk to NUL, and it runs without
a hitch if I let the system "warm up" (fast, too).  Running at 4.77 vs 8 Mhz
seems to make no difference.  Replacing the 8088 with a V20 made no difference
as far as this problem goes.  I have some information to the effect that
ST-238's made in a certain period have been recalled, but my drive is well
out of that period by several weeks.  Any thoughts?

-- 
William Phillips                 {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri\
Big Electric Cat Public Unix           {bellcore,cmcl2}!cucard!dasys1!wfp
New York, NY, USA                                {philabs}!tg/