jones@eglin.af.mil (Calvin Jones, III) (11/02/89)
There's been some discussion about hard drives making somewhat "random" noises. First, rule out the auto-spell-checkers that are accessing the drive when you are not aware of it, and then rule out any drives that will auto-park after a certain period of inactivity - Miniscribe 3650 & 3675 come to mind. "Random" drive noise in these cases *IS* ok. Richard Stevens <rps2@conexch.uucp> Writes: > Those aren't parks, they're track 0 reseeks (otherwise known as > "recalibrates") As to why they happen...I dunno. All SCSI drives do it, > some more than others. Just ignore it. Consider it your Seagate saying, > "Hi! I'm healthy!" ~~~~~~~ NO! NO! The seeks to track zero are the first signs that your drive is getting sick! At this point the drive electronics is not able to find the particular sector its looking for and is re-calibrating. If this is happening to you, try the following: 1. Back up the entire drive. I'd recommend using a program that backs up to standard AmigaDos format on floppies so you can actually use the floppies without the hard drive if it becomes necessary. The few cents you'll have to spend for the extra floppies should be worth the extra safety. 2. Verify the backup *YOURSELF*. Don't trust the "read-after-write" options. Put each of the floppies in *ANOTHER* floppy drive and copy the files to NULL: to make sure that they are readable. Only then are you really confident that you have a good backup. 3. Now you need to do a new low-level format on the drive. Make sure that the drive is in its normal operating environment when you do this. It should be in the physical location and position that it will occupy when in use, and it should be "warmed-up" to normal operating temperature. Don't forget to map out the bad sectors that were provided by the drive manufacturer when you start the low-level format. 4. Once the low-level format is done, mount and format the partitions. 5. Restore the data. If the data is in AmigaDos format and you have enough memory you can set up a RAD: that's the same configuration as a floppy and use a batch file that will: Diskcopy DF1: to RAD: Copy RAD: to DH0: all This will get the data back to disk at about one floppy per minute! --- Cal // Cal Jones - Internet: <Jones@UV4.Eglin.AF.Mil> or \X/ BBS: 904-243-6219 1200-9600HST 340Meg, all Amiga --------------------------------------------------------------------- NW Florida's first Amiga BBS running on NW Florida's FIRST AMIGA!