Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!gatech!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!iuvax!ndmath!ndcheg!evan
From: evan@ndcheg.UUCP (Evan Bauman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: hard disks keep croaking
Message-ID: <349@ndcheg.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jan 88 18:50:30 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Notre Dame
Lines: 30
Keywords: disk, pc, xt, dead

Perhaps there's someone out there who's had a similar experience
and knows how to fix it.

The configuration is a PC's limited Turbo XT.  It has 2 floppy drives
(1 5.25 drive, 1 3.5 drive) and a 20 MB hard disk.  At first, I installed
a FlashCard 20MB disk-on-a-card.  The disk then started developing bad sectors
at an alarming rate.  I would back up what I could, re-format and re-load
the software, but this continued.

Since the PC is located in a less-than-ideal location; e.g. smoke-filled
secretary's room, I assumed that the environment was destroying the
disk.  I replaced the FlashCard with my own Seagate ST 251 20MB disk
which was in my own Turbo-XT for a year and which gave me no problems.

The disk worked well for several months, but lately has been developing
problems of the 'abort, retry, ignore' type.  The error messages are
transient.  Sometimes the data is there; sometimes it's not.  First
I thought the problem might be heat-related.  I had them run it with cover
off for a while, but this didn't help much.  Now I've got them replacing
the power supply.

Has anyone encountered a similar problem?  Do I have to replace the disk
with one that is more 'durable'?  What is a more durable disk?  I should
point out that this machine is extremely heavily used.

Thanks in advance for any help.

	Evan Bauman
	Univ. of Notre Dame
	..!iuvax!ndcheg!evan