Altos 568 disk problems

[milo at ndmath.UUCP]

I have been experiencing some problems with Altos 586 40Meg hard disk drives.  
So far the drive in my system has failed like clockwork once a year with 
a replacement of the drive being the only (COSTLY) fix possible.  Symptoms are
an gradually increasing number of soft and hard disk errors.  These errors 
appear at random and many will vanish when the disk is reformatted, 
unfortunately an equal number of hard errors usually reappear somewhere else.

My current hard disk is beginning to show the same signs of failure, this disk
was extensively tested (several days of read/write tests) when it was new so
a surfacing of original media defects is unlikely.

Does anybody have a clue as to what might be causing this problem?  My system
is on-line and in use 24 hours a day 7 days a week and is only turned off
during severe weather.

If you have experienced similar problems please write or call me.

Greg Corson
19141 Summers Drive
South Bend, IN 46637
219-272-2136

pur-ee!iuvax!kangaro!milo