Mounting hard disks at strange angles (was RE: OT: the 1U system)

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_panix.com>
Date: Thu Jan 30 11:41:00 2003

On Thu, 30 Jan 2003, Ethan Dicks wrote:

> --- "Feldman, Robert" <Robert_Feldman_at_jdedwards.com> wrote:
> > Folklore for PC's was that if you recorded data on a hard drive with the
> > platters horizontal, remounting it vertically could cause read errors.
> > Any truth to this?
>
> Anyone have any personal experiences with oddly-mounted drives?

  My venerable IBM XT spent it's long life standing on it's side next to
my desk. In the fulness of time, I upgraded, and it was purchased by a
friend. He came over, we put it through some confidence tests, and he
took it home. And called me a half-hour later, because it wouldn't boot
at all, giving a fatal HD fault.

  Long story short: he put it on the desk, on it's "feet", and the old 10M
Seagate promptly failed. Turning it up on edge restored it to life and
DOS, in that order. So we took out the HD, wrapped cardboard around it to
insulate the PC board, and left it outside the PC case on it's edge.

  Ran for another two years like that, doing statistics number crunching
(SPSS).

  Cheers

John
Received on Thu Jan 30 2003 - 11:41:00 GMT