Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!munnari!vuwcomp!dsiramd!peterb
From: peterb@dsiramd.nz (Peter Burgess)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Hard Disk Nightmares
Message-ID: <210@dsiramd.nz>
Date: 25 Apr 88 22:09:14 GMT
Reply-To: peterb@dsiramd.UUCP (Peter Burgess)
Organization: DSIR Applied Mathematics Division, Wellington, NZ
Lines: 58

Below is a description of some problems we have had with our macs, if anyone
has had similar experiences or can answer some of the questions raised then
I would appreciate it if they could send me a mail.  I will summarize if I get
many replies.

We purchased 2 Mac SEs, both suffered hard disk failures.

The first mac I tried had a bad hard disk!  The Apple HD Setup program reported
that no hard drive could be found.  This mac was sent to our local agents for
service.

The second mac worked fine for a couple of weeks but then the hard disk went
bad and had to be re-initialized.  This seemed to cure the problem.

A few weeks after that however the disk developed a hard fault.  More and more
disk errors occured and eventually I decided to try re-initializing.  The HD
Setup program reported that the drive had a hardware fault and could not be
initialized.

Meanwhile the repair shop had tried replacing the hard drive in our first mac
but with no success.  They then tried replacing both the drive and the
controller card.  This seemed to work and we picked up the mac (just in time
to replace our other one!)

Much to my amazement this failed the very next day (hard disk fault again).

We are currently still waiting for both of them to be fixed as there seems to
be a shortage of spare parts.

Our SEs are normally situated in a terminal room and used by scientific
staff, but are sometimes borrowed for use at home. We are now wondering whether
the SEs are more fragile than we understood. We believed it was safe to
transport them with reasonable care (in Mac padded carry bags), and that the
disks are auto-parking on power down.  (That is what we were told by one
`expert', although another said that the Shut Down command does this.)

I cannot find anything in the manual which suggests the latter statement.
The description on page 177 does not say that shut down parks the hard disk.
It merely states that:

"It's a good idea to choose Shut Down before you turn off the Macintosh SE.
That way, the system has a chance to close files properly and make sure
everything is in place on your disks."

Most of the time a Shut Down has been performed before power down, but there
have been occasions when it hasn't, because I was sure that no disk activity
was occuring.

Are these likely to be just random failures or has anyone similar 
(un-)reliability experience with SEs, possible explanations or advice?

Peter Burgess,
Applied Mathematics Division,
New Zealand Govt. Dept. of Scientific and Industrial Research.

INTERNET: peterb@dsiramd.dsir.govt.nz
UUCP: ...!uunet!vuwcomp!dsiramd.nz!peterb
ACSNET: peterb@dsiramd.nz