Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!nrl-cmf!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!n8emr!uncle!jbm From: jbm@uncle.UUCP (John B. Milton) Newsgroups: comp.sys.att Subject: Re: HELP with 7300 hard disk PLEASE Keywords: dead disk 7300 help Message-ID: <383@uncle.UUCP> Date: 1 Nov 88 05:02:51 GMT References: <1311@plx.UUCP> Reply-To: jbm@uncle.UUCP (John B. Milton) Organization: Just me and my computer, Columbus Ohio Lines: 34 In article <1311@plx.UUCP> walt@plx.UUCP (Walt Novinger ) writes: >My 7300's 40MB Seagate ST251 hard disk suddenly went south the other day, >and I have to get the data off it, if possible. I tried running the >diagnostics disk to test the drive, and it fails on the "recal" test. Are you absolutely sure it's spinning up? I have heard of drives where the baking mechanism stickes to the spindle on shutdown and the next time you power it up, it won't spin up. If it won't spin up, it won't try to move the heads. One solution was dropthe fron of the machine about 6" to jar it loose. I don't think I would recomend that. If it is spinning up, then the lack of recal could be several problems. Bad logic board on the drive. You should be able to get that board replaced and still get the data. BE WARNED if you try to send a drive back for service, even if you mark it to keep the drive part, they will most likely scrap it. The best solution is to get another drive of the same type, a spline head tool and swap the board yourself. The other thing keeping it from recaling might be soft. The diagnostic disk won't tell you the difference between 1. can't move the head to track 0, 2. can't get a track header on the lowest track, and 3. drive is missing the drive magic number. It could be that a tiny glitch has dinged the VHB (Volume Home Block). The bad news is that there isn't much in the way of low level utilities on the UNIXpc to go patching around with. The interactive device test is supposed to almost allow some of this, but it won't work for hard disks, only floppies. My suggestion if you want to see what's REALLY on the disk right now, is to put it on a PClone and get ahold of one of those super fantanstic hard drive programs that are out now. One of those should be able to show you more than you want to know and, at least tell you whether it's a hardware or magware problem. John -- John Bly Milton IV, jbm@uncle.UUCP, n8emr!uncle!jbm@osu-cis.cis.ohio-state.edu (614) h:294-4823, w:764-4272; MS-DOS is a beautiful flower that smells bad!