SPARC disk loss and 'sticktion'

[Jeff Heisz]

   This may be a little behind the times (that's what a vacation can
do to you :)), but thought I might relate my own experience with this
disk problem (it is somwhat humorous).

   We have a SPARCstation 1 with two internal 104MB drives.  When my
supervisor moved into his new office (just down the hall), he took the
SPARC along with him, naturally.  Next thing I know, I get a call from
him that the machine will not restart, giving a 'disk label corrupt'
error (the indicator for this problem).

   Using the screwdriver-stethescope, we found that sd0 was not
spinning.  After calling SUN service and getting no answers
(no service contract :( ), one of the scretaries asked us if we had
`hit it'.  She did this so serously that we actually tried it...but
being the paranoid people we were, we tapped it with a pencil eraser
(with no effect).

   It came down to the send-in-and-replace option, at which point I
decided to take it home and either fix it or make sure it was definitely
dead.  I hooked it up to portable supply, and began progressively
beating on the drive.  Two hours later (at which point I was up to
dropping it on my apartment floor from shoulder height), my wife gets
home, and asks some question which triggers an alarm in my head that I
have the power supply hooked up wrong.  After the panic subsided, I hooked
it up correctly, and had a happy spinning drive sitting on my kitchen
table (and they say these things are fragile??).

  That was a year ago.  The drive has stopped on occasion due to power
failure, at which point we pull it out, shake it, and it restarts fine.
No new bad sectors or any other problems with the drive.  In fact, four
other machines in the department have exhibited the same problem
(always sd0!!), but we don't quite put them through that original
punishment.  The exact procedure is to grab the disk from above,
centering your arm over the hard disk spindle.  Then, a couple of
quick twists of the wrist are all that is needed to free whatever is
stuck and get the drive running again.  I have even gotten a
professional anti-static strap for just this situation.

Jeff Heisz                         Standard disclaimers apply...I'm
Dept. of Physics                   not even in computer science!!!
Queen's Univ. CANADA
(heisz at sparky.phy.queensu.ca)