jmpiazza@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Joseph M. Piazza) (04/15/89)
Me again.
My Seagate 138N (3.5" 30 Meg) doesn't seem to spin-up -- no
characteristic jet-pitched whine. It did this last week but turning the
machine on and off a few times did the trick. Not this time. Two questions:
1. I've seen posting talking about this spin-up problem as well as a
solution (aside from buying another hard drive).
2. What's the warranty on this sucker? Two labels on the drive warn
about voiding the warranty but nothing about this, nor virtually all other
information, comes with the drive.
Any information welcome. As always, send e-mail and I'll summarize
and post. I'll e-mail everything I receive upon request (my last summary is
about two months late). :-O
Thanks,
joe piazza
---
In capitalism, man exploits man.
In communism, it's the other way around.
CS Dept. SUNY at Buffalo 14260
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BITNET: jmpiazza@sunybcs.BITNET Internet: jmpiazza@cs.Buffalo.edurichard@gryphon.COM (Richard Sexton) (04/16/89)
In article <5283@cs.Buffalo.EDU> jmpiazza@cs.Buffalo.EDU (Joseph M. Piazza) writes: > > My Seagate 138N (3.5" 30 Meg) doesn't seem to spin-up -- no It's dead Jim. >1. I've seen posting talking about this spin-up problem as well as a >solution (aside from buying another hard drive). > >2. What's the warranty on this sucker? Two labels on the drive warn >about voiding the warranty but nothing about this, nor virtually all other >information, comes with the drive. > > Any information welcome. As always, send e-mail and I'll summarize >and post. I'll e-mail everything I receive upon request (my last summary is >about two months late). :-O By some unfortunate set of circumstances, I am forced to use an IBM-PC clone at work. I *tried* to hold out for an Apollo, but.... At any rate, having a PC entitles you to read PC Week without embarassment. There was an article in the last issue (or one back) that stated that Seagate was having terrible quality control problems and was having up to 25 - 30% failure rates on a product that typically has only 0.5% failure rates. I thuoght perhaps at first the article was just slanderous with somebody haveing an axe to grinf but quaoted several distributors who stated thar they'd had MAJOR problems with Seagate drives. The drives most often listed were the 3" ones and the ST-4096 80MB. drive. Seagate drive are CHEAP. One distributor mentioned that you get what you pay for, and that Seagate drives were ``consumer grade'', while, other drives, such as CDC were ``professional grade''. So perhaps a degee of caution should be exercised with Seagate drives until their quality comes back up. And it probably will happen. Miniscribe took a big dump when the IBM PC AT first came out because there were MAJOR problems with the hard disk subsystem - since then, they've done a lot of work and now have one of the most reliable drives in the industry. In conclusion: I would avoid buying a Seagate drive for the time being. And as to the question of warrenty, it depends how and from who you bought your drive from. But I suspect that if you said the right things to a Seagate rep, you may get some action. They've got to have notice their sales slumping a bit. -- ``Parents who have children, have children who have children'' richard@gryphon.COM decwrl!gryphon!richard gryphon!richard@elroy.jpl.NASA.GOV
charles@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM (Charles Brown) (04/20/89)
> My Seagate 138N (3.5" 30 Meg) doesn't seem to spin-up -- no > characteristic jet-pitched whine. > joe piazza I don't own a Seagate (I am avoiding them because of these problems I keep hearing about) and I am writing this from memory, so take my advice with a salt mine or so. You may need to rotate the spindle just a tad. You may be able to do this with pliers. Do it with the power off. Hopefully that will bring it up again. Good luck. -- Charles Brown charles%hpcvca@hplabs.hp.com Not representing my employer. "The guy sure looks like plant food to me."
jwcote@blake.acs.washington.edu (Jim Cote) (04/21/89)
I purchased a Seagate st-277n about two months ago and have nothing but trouble. I have been extremely busy with other things such that I haven't resolved my drive problems yet. Problem --- I have never yet been able to do a low-level format of the drive. Obviously, I have never gotten any use from it yet. The configuration : A1000 Starboard II w/stardrive module home brew db25 to centronics 50 pin cable home brew 50 pin cent. to dual row connector cable hard drive expansion box I have checked the cabling over and over with an ohmmeter and such, plus I have built two different sets of cables assuming the problem was my cables, but nothing works. I am confident the cables are ok. Using the stardrive formatting program, I can get the drive to mount, but when I try to do the low-level format, I receive a message that the SCSI bus is unavailable, no select. Any suggestions will be appreciated. BTW, I continue to see comments about tweaking the spindle to allow the drive to spin when it gets locked up using a pair of pliers. I can move the spindle (or what I beleive is the spindle) on my drive with the tip of my finger, it moves that easily. Is this normal?