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From: dick@plx.UUCP (Dick Flanagan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: RLL controllers
Message-ID: <866@plx.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Nov-87 15:37:54 EST
Article-I.D.: plx.866
Posted: Tue Nov 10 15:37:54 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Nov-87 07:24:28 EST
References: <3230@xanth.UUCP> <288@wa3wbu.UUCP>
Reply-To: dick@plx.UUCP (Dick Flanagan)
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My experience with Adaptec RLL controllers and Seagate ST-2xx drives may
be of interest.  I bought an Adaptec 2070A controller to drive my two
ST-225 drives.  One drive never gave me any problems at all (except for
some quickly found/locked out bad sectors), but the other drive couldn't
hold data in a bucket for more than a couple of days before it started
getting Bad Data errors.  I won't bore you with all the trials that led
up to the ultimate solution, but both drives have performed flawlessly
for over six months now.

The key to the problem was that when the errors first started to occur,
it was after the system had been on for a while.  Then, they started to
occur when the system was first powered up, before gradually going away
after a while.  I was definitely seeing a thermal problem in the one
drive (I eliminated the controller as the source of the thermal problem
because the other drive was just humming along perfectly).

My ultimate solution was to leave the machine turned on for a couple of
days to ensure everything was uniformly heat soaked, perform a low-level
format of the offending drive (I was getting real good at that), and then
never turn the machine off again!  As a matter of fact, everything seems
to work better now that I'm no longer powering the machine off and on.

If nothing else works, this might be a last-resort solution to try.


-- 
Dick Flanagan, W6OLD                          I'll take a drug test when
UUCP:  ...!ucbvax!sun!plx!dick                Reagan takes an IQ test.
GEnie: FLANAGAN