Quantum Lightning 540 AT Hard Disk

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue Jul 29 13:11:00 2003

> I have an old Quantum Lightning 540 AT hard disk
...
> However, now, having tried to install the drive in a
> more modern machine to archive the data to CDR, the
> drive while recognized by the machine and the drive
> itself spinning up and apparently working returns a
> "hard disk read failure" error.

Well it has drive to the spindle motor by the sounds of it. Whether the head
assembly is intact is another matter.

I think you can swap the boards on these things and expect them to still work -
so using the combination of your chassis / motor / platter assembly and the
logic board off a good drive might be enough - unless it is a fault in the head
assembly.

I have a Prodrive LPS 540AT in front of me right now which is likely the same
thing as a Lightning. There seems to be just the one ribbon cable connecting
the logic board to everything so a swap wouldn't be tricky and might cure
things. Those drives used to be everywhere at one point so finding one
shouldn't be too hard.

Do double-check your drive cabling and BIOS settings (assuming it's a PC you're
hooking up to) etc. - modern PC's seem to have a few billion settings for the
disks and probably think you're using a new drive; they may make incorrect
assumptions about data rates etc.

> Can anybody point me in the direction of any good
> information regarding the testing/diagnosis/repair of
> head-disk-assembly problems?

I know Western Digital used to release diagnostic utilities for their drives
and held them on their website; there may be similar Quantum ones floating
around.

cheers

Jules

=====
Backward conditioning: putting saliva in a dog's mouth in an attempt to make a bell ring.

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Received on Tue Jul 29 2003 - 13:11:00 BST

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