Good news on my RK05 drives

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Thu Jul 29 08:41:40 2004

>>>>> "Tony" == Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk> writes:

>> I wrote a little test program to attempt to read random blocks and
>> I watched the read/write head. It did move in and out like it
>> should. If it was attempting to read a low numbered block, it
>> moved just a little bit. If it was attempting to read a high
>> numbered block, it moved farther toward the center of the platter.
>> However, every

 Tony> That sounds right. There should be a vernier scale on the
 Tony> positioner so you can check it's going to the correct cylinder,
 Tony> but at this point I'd assume it was not the problem.

>> attempt to read or write resulted in an error. The head would
>> position to the appropriate(?) position on the disk, sit there a
>> short while, and then move back to cylinder 0.

 Tony> This is presumably due to your program, or the RSTS driver. The
 Tony> hardware should not do this. Can you execute seek commands from
 Tony> the front panel? If so, I assume the head goes to a cylinder
 Tony> and stays there.

Yup. Typical software error handling is to do a couple of retries,
and finally end up with a drive reset or "recalibrate". That's the
control/alt/del of hard drives... :-)

        paul
Received on Thu Jul 29 2004 - 08:41:40 BST