I'm Back!

From: Marty <Marty_at_itgonline.com>
Date: Wed Aug 26 15:24:52 1998

 O'Toole's Rule states that Murphy (re: Murphy's Law) was an optimist.
 I'd do a regular backup in anticipation of the inevitable. I had a Mac
 SE with a stiction prone drive that finally died after a couple months
 of nudging. The heads can only take so much before they are hopelessly
 out of alignmnent.
 
 Marty
 


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_________________________________
Subject: Re: Re[2]: I'm Back!
Author: classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu at internet
Date: 8/26/98 3:51 PM


 Well, mine still works. It just needs a nudge once in a while at
 boot up. Is it going to get worse or can I use it for a while?
> I agree that there is no cure for stiction but on the older 3 1/2" FF
> HDD's I used to gently nudge the spindle flywheel under the drive
> board. This would free the head of the platter goo and typically the
> drive would spin up and boot at which point a complete backup was
> made.
>
>
>
>______________________________ Reply Separator
>_________________________________
>Subject: Re: I'm Back!
>Author: classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu at internet
>Date: 8/23/98 1:25 PM
>
>
> > certain hard drive of mine won't spin up unless whacked firmly
> > against a table? Is there anything I can do? This is a laptop
 drive. >>
> >
> > stiction. nothing you can do about it.
> >
> Actually an ex-friend of mine had a technique to 'sticky' drives. The
> theory goes if it's hosed anyway and you need to get data off it, you
 can
> do things to it that you wouldn't ordinarily do and what do you have
 to lose?
>
> At any rate, I've used it before and it seems to work on X percent of
> drives that are totally stuck (especially ones that won't start up
 even
> when whacked). You put the drive top-down (circuit side up) on top of
 a
> nice toasty monitor and just leave it there for several days or weeks.
 I
> don't know if this loosens up some lubricant, expands whatever's
 sticky
> or what but if you take the drive off the monitor and hook it up
> immediately and start it up immediately...occasionally you can get it
 to
> spin up and give you your data.
>
> The opposite of this is a drive I had (old Miniscribe 20 meg SCSI)
 that
> would run for about 2 hours, overheat and 'shut down' (it wouldn't
 spin
> down...it'd just start giving errors and was generally useless). I
 knew
> it was heat because I could extend the time-till-shutdown to about 3
> hours by pointing a small muffin fan at it. I had NO money at the
> time...except for rent money I was flat broke...and couldn't afford to
> replace the drive and...seeing how it was 1991 and I live in the
> backwater state of Iowa, nobody would loan me a replacement. The Mac
 SE
> it was in was also out of warranty.
>
> At any rate, since it was winter it was cold outside so I wrapped the
> drive in a plastic bag, sealed it up with duct tape around the SCSI
> cable, set it on the ledge outside the window, closed the window
 without
> squishing the cable and sealed up the crack with duct tape. Left the
> machine and the drive on for something like 2 months that way (though
 my
> memory is a bit rusty there) until I could save enough money for a
> replacement. I was worried about condensation inside the bag but it
> never caused a problem. At one point, the drive slid off the ledge
 and
> was dangling by the SCSI cable and power cable but the duct tape held
 it
> firm. It ran like that for several days until I noticed it wasn't on
 the
> ledge.
>
> On a related subject, I've seen and had several Syquest 40 meg drives
> that wouldn't work and wouldn't work and wouldn't work until you
 flipped
> them upside and then they'd work just fine. Not the cartridge...the
> whole drive.
>
> Which reminds me...I worked at a typesetting shop once and a guy from
> another department walks in and tells me he's accidentally formatted
 his
> syquest cartridge and is there any way to get the data back? So, with
 a
> room full of people who knew better I told him, "Oh yeah...if you just
> flip the cartridge over, that'll run it backwards so that if you
 format
> it again, that'll do the reverse of formatting it and you data will be
> back." I figured he'd know I was kidding but he DIDN'T and starting
> walking away to DO IT! I stopped him fortunately and recovered his
 data
> with proper tools. Of course, a couple months later he thrashed the
> innards of a $1500 magneto-optical drive by jamming an 80 meg syquest
> cartridge into it REAL HARD. I patiently explained to him that when
 you
> hear snapping sounds and grinding metal you're generally doing
 something
> wrong.
>
> Anthony Clifton - Wirehead
>
>
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 From: "Max Eskin" <maxeskin_at_hotmail.com>
 To: "Discussion re-collecting of classic computers"
 <classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
 Subject: Re: Re[2]: I'm Back!
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