-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Aaron
Blosser
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2000 12:18 PM
To: Mersenne@Base. Com
Subject: RE: Mersenne: Just curious
<SNIP>
>For what it's worth...
>
>I've heard that referred to as "stiction" :) There's a decent enough
>solution to the problem of "stuck" drive heads, but you really should be
>absolutely sure that's what the problem is...
>
>Drives have a "landing zone" or parking area where the heads will move to
>when it's powered down. There's no data on that part of the track, so if
>your heads do get stuck there when it's turned off, there's something you
>can try...
>
>Again, be sure that's really what the problem is before trying this... :)
>
>But, in short, with the drive powered on and making the "hey, my heads are
>stuck!" noise, you gently rap the drive on a hard surface. Rap it harder
>and harder until finally you hear the heads moving about normally.
Usually,
>the head will unstick itself and as long as the head wasn't actually
>damaged, you may have just enough time to get your data backed up pronto.
>
>Jeremy and I used to do that alot on those first generation IDE drives
>(which seemed to have this problem much more often) back when we were
>computer techs... It sounds funny, I know, but it worked great most of the
>time.
>
If I remember correctly, it seemed to happen with certain batches of
drivers. Like a batch of WD drivers and then later maybe Maxtor or whatever.
And there was *always* the same problem in that it would spin up and then
right back down again at boot (usually the first boot). So I think it was
more of a shipping or drive problem or something more than anything. But, as
a last ditch effort it works...
In reality tho, I think that what is *more* common is the actual controller
or PCB on the drive starts to flake out before an actual problem w/ the
platters etc. Usually, if it is a platter/head problem its usually due to
abuse (such as dropping something heavy on your drive while its
reading/writing).
I'll never forget the times when we would do data recovery of a bad drive by
putting it in the freezer for 30 mins, which we *theorized* shrank the PCB
on the HD thus fixing some stress fracture or whatever temporarily (long
enough to get the data off the drive before it heated back up again).
Just remember the following is ONLY recommended if you are trying last ditch
type of things and don't want to spend the $$$ sending it off to a *REAL*
data recovery type of place.
>For what it's worth, modern drives rarely have this problem. Even the
>10,000 RPM drives which get QUITE hot during use have good landing zone
>areas where the heads aren't likely to come into contact with the hot
>platters.
<SNIP>
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