phco@ecsvax.UUCP (10/31/84)
Reference: <3399@ecsvax.UUCP> Thanks to all who responded to my recent inquiry about the practicality of cleaning RL02 disk packs. Suggestions included the following: -- Get someone to clean the disks. Prices mentioned varied from $10-15 to $50 per cartridge. Cleaning should have no effect on the data. -- Buy a disk cleaner and use it on all disks every 6 months or whenever the number of soft errors seemed excessive. Prices from $500 to $2000 were mentioned for cleaning equipment. -- When a disk accumulates more hard bad blocks than will fit in two tracks, trash it or get it resurfaced (about half the cost of a disk). -- Have DEC service check the alignment of the drives whenever packs seem flakey. Head realignment frequently will help. -- Check your purchase date and see if you can have the disks replaced on warranty. Several persons also mentioned that they had discarded removable pack drives in favor of fixed winchester disks. Since we have only a few disks, we'll probably just get DEC to clean them. --- John Miller (ecsvax!phco) Dept. of Pharmacology Univ. of N.C. at Chapel Hill