Incredible rumor about SPARCstation internal disk lossage

[Fred Senese]

Larry Beaulieu (gca!beaulieu at uunet.uu.net) writes:
> When repowering up the system the system waits for the drive to spin up
> and then barfs.  The heads are apparently stuck in their home position
and
> the system times out waiting for the drive to spin up.
> You can either
> 1) Replace the drive
>         or:
> 2) Take the drive out of the workstation and rap it once on the *side**
>    against the edge of the desk.  This will jar the heads loose and
>    allow the drive to spin up again.

This problem was common with Seagate SCSI drives a few years ago.
It was attributed to ``worms'' of lubricant forming on the disk
surface after several months of spinning; the extra lubricant
forms a seal and locks the heads in home position.

I replaced one such drive and the replacement began to display the same
behaviour after about six months.  I've had it for about two years now.
When it fails to spin up, I carefully nudge the spindle with a
screwdriver.
The drive always spins up after a single nudge, and with my setup I don't
have to pull the drive off its mounting rails.

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