[comp.sys.mac] SCSI HD Errors

cohn@ucbvax.UUCP (03/31/87)

I just experienced a strange sort of disk crash recently and I wondered
if anyone else out there has experienced the problem.  I was developing
some software that bombed (of course) and somehow triggered the writing
of bad data to my Master DIrectoy Block.  Yikes!  Well, as the confident,
optimistic person that I was, I hadn't backed up my 30Meg SCSI HD from
Peripheral Land.  Apparently, not only was my master directory screwed,
but so was one of the 640 cylinders!  Question:  How can a software
crash cause a whole cylinder to physically go bad?  I called Peripheral
Land, and was greeted by a lot of "sorries" and "there's-nothing-we-
can-do's" so you might as well "reinitialize your disk."  Yikes!  

Is there any good reconstruction software for SCSI's available besides
Scavenger and Disk First Aid?  Both of those programs couldn't stand the
heat.  If you have had a similar problem with hard disk crashes, I'd
be interested.

Ted Cohn
ARPA:  cohn@cory.berkeley.edu

jmb@sgi.UUCP (04/02/87)

In article <18095@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, cohn@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Ted Cohn) writes:
> I just experienced a strange sort of disk crash recently and I wondered
>                                               ....  I called Peripheral
> Land, and was greeted by a lot of "sorries" and "there's-nothing-we-
> can-do's" so you might as well "reinitialize your disk."  Yikes!  
> 
> ...
>
> Ted Cohn
> ARPA:  cohn@cory.berkeley.edu

Just a side note on Peripheral Land.  I've had a SCSI disk and streaming
tape from them for about a year now.  While their hardware seems allright,
their programmers couldn't program themselves out of a paper bag.  In
addition, I've found their support small to non-existent.

I'd recommend to anybody considering buying a product from them that you
find somebody who'll sell you a cheaper disk with decent software support.
Note that Peripheral Land doesn't bother to tell you prices in their
ads - just remember "expensive".

Jim Barton

From the UNIX asylum at SiliconGraphics, Inc.
jmb@sgi.sgi.com,  sgi!jmb@decwrl.dec.com, ...{decwrl,sun}!sgi!jmb

mikep@amd.UUCP (04/04/87)

In article <18095@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>, cohn@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU (Ted Cohn) writes:
> I just experienced a strange sort of disk crash recently and I wondered
>                                               ....  I called Peripheral
> Land, and was greeted by a lot of "sorries" and "there's-nothing-we-
> can-do's" so you might as well "reinitialize your disk."  Yikes!  
> 
> ...
>
> Ted Cohn
> ARPA:  cohn@cory.berkeley.edu

I messed up the desktop on my Jasmine 20 pretty bad the first day
I had it. Being relatively new to Macs I was clueless as to what to
do. Called Jasmine's tech support line the next morning at 9:00
and had the disk back to life in 10 minutes. They were very patient
even though it was clear that I didn't know what I was doing.

Mike