Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!nmtsun!vogelei
From: vogelei@nmtsun.nmt.edu (Todd Vogelei)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: SE30 40 MB HD problems
Message-ID: <2549@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Date: 4 May 89 07:22:11 GMT
References: <732@island.uu.net> <8070@fluke.COM>
Reply-To: vogelei@nmtsun.nmt.edu (Todd Vogelei)
Organization: New Mexico Tech, Socorro NM
Lines: 49

In article <8070@fluke.COM> moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) writes:
>In article <732@island.uu.net> gordon@island.uu.net (Gordon Kio) writes:
>>Well, I went to work on my nice, new, SE30 yesterday and low and behold it
>>just couldn't find the hard disk. Every time I restarted it or turned it on and
>>off, the HD access light would start blinking and then slowly fade away. 
>>(Poor thing, it was really trying to find it.) I called a friend and he
>>mentioned that discussions on problems with the SE30's 40 meg hard drives


>I have an SEx with an 80MB internal drive, and yeah, this happened to me
>quite a bit when I first got the machine.  Since I've got 5 Megs RAM in it,
>it takes a while to run through the memory check sequence; during the
>morning boot-up, after the RAM check finished, the drive would just blink,
>unable to find the drive.  I would use the programmer's switch to reboot,
>and then it would boot up fine, no problem.  Later restarts or boot-ups
>would work fine later in the day.

Well I thought it could never happen to me but this morning I went to fire up
my mac II and low and behold it couldn't find the hard drive.  Trying
to run HD installer get me the "nothing in the SCZI slot" message.  I
popped the hood on the box to look at the drive and it was blinking its
light a lot at start up but it would go out in about a minute and that
would be that.  Apple 40 M internal drive was about 6 weeks out of warranty.

I tore the cords out of the back and raced to my nearest Computerland
(90 miles away) and explained it is finals week and I'm stuck big time.
They got me an extension on my warranty because of earlier service they had
done (power supply and main board @ 87 days into a 90 day warranty) and 
chunked in a new drive in about 3 hours.  Great guys these Computerland 
techs.  

I got lucky, I had done a full HD backup using Apples utility that comes
with the machine only 9 days previously and laborously restored my files.
It took about an hour.  One floppy out of the 40 failed to restore properly
the first time and only on one file that I recovered on a second try.
I figure when the electronics go, not even Symantic can save you but
I do want to get a good backup program and wonder what people are using
and recommend.  Also, it occurs to me that the guy who wanted the electronic
equivalent of a postit, that would be a cool thing to have 'cause you could 
have it bug you every two weeks to back up the hard drive.

Anyhow, I just thought I'd take this opportunity to remind you all to 

BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE *TODAY*!

You'll be glad you did :)

Todd
vogelei@nmtsun