IRIS 3030 Disk Problems

[Dana Roode]

I'm no SGI expert (we use Sun, DEC, Apollo equipment), but Im trying
to help someone whose disk appears to be dying.  After a recent power
failure, he started getting hard disk failures, and lots of them, in
different locations on the disk.  The system hangs alot, despite us
having swapped out the badspots using sifex.

If you are a 3030 expert, and could spare a few moments, please read
on:
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We are going to try reformatting the disk, but sifex doesnt seem to be
documented anywhere.  Is that right?  After we get as much of the disk
backed up as possible, we will experiment with sifex to see if we can get
it to do what we want (reformat, do several verification/excercise passes)

He is running version 3.6 of the OS.  Is that current, old or ancient?

We will need to rebuild the OS after reformatting, but that process
doesnt appear to be documented very well.  We think we can put it
together - we have a backup "mkboot" tape with the root on it.  What
filenumber holds the /usr OS files-cpio image on the 3.4/.5up/.6up
tapes?  Thats the part of the puzzle we are unsure of.

If the disk has really bitten the dust, we'll replace it.  Is it something
that is easily found third party, or are we best to stick with getting
it from SGI?  Its not a SCSI disk, is it?

Any help will be appreciated,

         dana roode
         roode at orion.cf.uci.edu
         bitnet: DFRoode at UCI