Incredible rumor about SPARCstation internal disk lossage

[Paul Eggert]

The problem is called ``stiction'', it's well known in disk circles, and it's
not limited to Sun.  Sometimes you can fix it by briskly rotating the drive by
hand about a quarter turn around a vertical axis, or by patting the drive once
gently (like a baby's bottom, I've been told).  Why does this work?  The rest
of this posting is quoted from Trudy E. Bell, ``Incredible shrinking
computers,'' _IEEE Spectrum_ 28, 5 (May 1991), 37-41; this well-written
article also covers the most likely solution to this problem in future drives,
namely dynamic loading.  Bell writes: