Re: Disk drive sticktion(?)

[marc@cxr_rs6000.med.ge.com (Marc Wolfgram)]

Paul Schultz writes:
> ...ST277N drive (circa 1987) and on rare occasions it won't come up to
>speed and the drive LED flashes a number of times.  When I power down and
>re-boot, it usually goes away.  Is this STICTION??

No... stiction is where the drive does not spin at all... Usually you can
get a "stuck" drive to spin up by tapping on the frame or by snapping it
in the axis of the spindle (much like a frisbee - but don't let go.)

Somebody mentioned a few posts back that he removed the drive cover and turned
the platters by hand (gasp!)  This is NOT a safe practice - the smallest bit
of dust can cause a physical head crash later, making for nice decorative
platters to hang on the wall and impress your friends.  In a last ditch effort
this can be tried but plan on pulling everything off the drive if you succeede
and then plan on retiring the mechanical.

Back to you're problem :)  The flashing LED is an indication that there was
either a physical or logical problem accessing the drive.  Most drives have
this form of SOS to tell you that something isn't right but it's not dead
yet.  If this is truely rare, then it could be something as simple as the CPU
tripping the drive before its ready or just a bad day.

Marc Wolfgram
AOL: M Wolfgram   GEnie: M.WOLFGRAM2   inet: marc@cxr_rs6000.med.ge.com
There are two ways to write bug-free code and only the third one works!