Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 18:47:08 -0500 (EST) From: spork <spork@super-g.com> To: Christoph Kukulies <kuku@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: advice sought - Quantum 2GB Atlas broken Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95.970102183826.18348A-100000@super-g.inch.com> In-Reply-To: <199701021724.SAA15524@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de>
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We had a similar situation here with a Quantum 4G Grand Prix (blechhh). It had some *very* important data on it, and of course this was before the backup system was in place (the death of a drive is what seems to spawn implementation of backup strategies...). We checked locally for anyone that could fix it, and a shop in town swapped PCB's to no avail. But they did say it's easy as pie to do yourself and is a good way to narrow the problem down. A Grand Prix that died about a month later was saved by cannibalizing one of it's friends in this way. The other drive ended up going to DriveSavers for some ridiculous amount of money ($3000 +) and came back with 100% of the data intact. A nice tape drive is a bit cheaper. On a different note, one thing I've started doing as I build machines (and it's helped so far as I can see in the short-term; Quantum Grand Prix drives were dying after less than 3 months of service) is to mount one of those 12V, 4" fans under every drive I install. I've found that on the 7200 RPM drives this will bring the case temperature down by about 30 degrees (F). And if I'm wrong and kooky to do that, I'm only out $10/drive. I'll also usually throw a few more fans on the case while I'm at it too. I've got a whole big grocery bag of these things, and I think it's going to extend the drive life immeasurably. Now I just have to find a way to detect when the CPU fan dies... Charles On Thu, 2 Jan 1997, Christoph Kukulies wrote: > Coming back from a short holiday I powered on a P90 machine with > (among other IDE disks) a Quantum 2GB ATLAS XP32150 and the SCSI disks > saluted with a continous one second interval clicking noise. > It spins up but the head seems to do some wild moves followed by a > 'chuck-clack' with the NCR PCI BIOS not coming to an end of the probing > phase. At least the NCR BIOS sits there for half an hour already > and that noise is repeating unchanged. > > As always in such situations that disk contained some important data I > would like to preserve. Despite of this the disk is still under warranty. > So giving it back and waiting 8 weeks for replacement isn't the issue. > It's just the data I wish to recover. > > Does anyone have experience with drive electronics swapping? > I have a second disk of that model and I'm tempted to swap the > electronics PCB (after having bought the appropriate hex nut driver > tomorrow, is that the correct expression :-) > > I suspect that the electronics stores some bad block info in some kind > of nvram on the controller board but not sure about this. > > > --Chris Christoph P. U. Kukulies kuku@gil.physik.rwth-aachen.de >
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