Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!sumax!nwnexus!intek01!mark
From: mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Disk Crash: Lessons learned
Keywords: CDC 94186-383H
Message-ID: <125@intek01.UUCP>
Date: 24 Feb 90 02:57:24 GMT
Organization: Integration Technologies Inc. (Intek), Bellevue WA
Lines: 28

Count me an even more fanatical member of the Church of the Frequent
Backup.

Our CDC 94186-383H gave up the ghost two weeks ago this weekend after
less than a year of service.  I came in Monday the 12th and found

	PANIC: HD Controller failure

on my console.  Oh noooooo.  It looks fixable; I didn't hear any
grinding metal when I tried to reboot.  The light on the drive just
blinked.

I had been doing a rather fragmented backup scheme ("well, I don't really
need this, do I?").  I also didn't have a kernel on floppy disk that had
TCP/IP or the tape driver in it, so I had to rebuild everything from
scratch.  I'm going to get a bootable floppy set up with a full-boat kernel,
the disk initialization stuff, and everything I need to restore to a new
disk in a hurry.

I didn't lose anything important, except my time.  We bought a Miniscribe
9380E that seems to be working fine so far.  But if it dies tomorrow, I'm
READY!

-- 
Mark McWiggins			Integration Technologies, Inc. (Intek)
+1 206 455 9935			DISCLAIMER:  I could be wrong ...
1400 112th Ave SE #202		Bellevue WA  98004
uunet!intek01!mark		Ask me about C++!