I recently got my Minis-QL Aurora out of storage after the cursed building venture back of this house, and its hard drive wouldn't work. I left it until I had more time to experiment and tried again. It worked first time. Again, left it at that. Next time I tried, it wouldn't work again. Then it would. I suddenly realised that every time it worked, the room was warm. The Minisql had been in the attic (where it was fairly cold and damp). Then it was in the dining room, but we only realised why it was so cold in there when we discovered the builders hadnt sealed the window; put your hand by the frame and a strong cold draught. SO in a fit of temper my wife sealed it herself rather than wait for me or builder to do the job. All of a sudden, as long as it's comfortiable temperature for a human the MinisQL hard drive works consistently, though I'm still reluctant to commit anything important to it. My hard drive failures (as opposed to straight forward crashes) always seem to have happened when the equipment is cold, I don't know if it's down to any lubrications inside not working well when cold (like me) or condensation or something like that.
Boy am I glad I didn't reformat that MinisQL drive! I would hazard a guess that as drive capacities get higher and denser that the mechanisms get more and more delicate and it takes less to tip them over the edge. I know from my audio technician past and working briefly at Peacock Electronics that motors in cd players for example tend to have their lubrication innards fail when they've been standing or very cold for some time. A fellow engineer used to put 2-3 times the normal voltage across the motor (in the case of little walkmen cd players a PP3 battery) for a few seconds on the grounds that OK it was already bust as far as the owner was concerned so if he burned it out, no extra problem, the m0tor had to be replaced anyway, but 9 times out of 10 it started up the motor (worryingly fast!) and released the insides and miraculously got it to work. Needless to say, we never told the owner what we'd done! Oh, and to show the mentality of that engineer, he used to test the PP3 9V battery first by putting his tongue across both contacts... Hard drive failures are not uncommon Bill, and not always total failures. -- Dilwyn Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.soft.net.uk/dj/index.html -----Original Message----- From: Bill Waugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 23 December 2001 15:47 Subject: [ql-users] Why me >Anyone got any theories on multiple hard drive failures, two have gone >west in the last two weeks. >The first was of little importance as it was merely used as a transfer >device between my wife's and my own hard drives on our PC ( we have our >own drives (C drive) in caddies). >The failure of the PC to recognise drive D was just an annoyance, but I >decided to do something about it and tried to format it on the PC - no >joy, I then attempted to format it on my Q40 - still no joy the drive is >I think dead. >As a short term measure I decided to replace it with the Win2_ drive in >my Q40, I use Win2 on the Q40 for backups mainly, I have some but not >all of the Q40 Win1_ backed up on floppies, so today the Q40 fired up >and wont recognise Win1_ - oh joy of joys. >No amount of win_drive dohickeying worked so in the end I was resigned >to format Win1 and put Christmas holidays on hold while I load in all >the stuff from the floppies. >I now have little faith in this drive ( 2.1 meg Cavier ). >Just wondered if anyone had any ideas why this could of happened. >The Q40 shares a printer and a monitor with the PC, no switching is >required as the printer has usb for PC and par for Q40, the monitor a >Sony has dual input, two night ago the PC ( Windows 98 ) took it upon >itself to switch resolution from 800x600 to something lower, however I >have used the Q40 since then without problem. I did notice though that >an archive file with a COUNT() of 92 now has a COUNT() of 0.00289... or >something. >oh I'm running smsqe 2.98 >All the best - Bill >
