ragnar@dvlmarv.UUCP (Ragnar Paulson) (03/17/88)
This is a request for help/information on a recurring hard disk crash we are experiencing. We have a Model 130 Compaq 386/20 with 40 Mbyte internal tape back up (Irwin). We are running SCO Xenix 2.2 for the 386. There are two problems, maybe related. The first occurs during use of the tape drive. Sometimes, when a tape is inserted, the hard disk light begins to flash regularly, and all subsequent accesses produce disk error messages. This happens as soon as the tape is inserted, before the drive finishes repositioning to the beginning of the tape. Once it even happened before I finished pushing the tape in. This leads me to believe it is a hardware problem and support at SCO tends to agree. However when I talk to our hardware suppliers they've never heard of a problem like this. They said it sounds like a the drive "powered-down" and suggested we replace the power-supply or the hard disk. Replacing the power supply didn't help. So now they want to replace the hard disk. Will this help? Has anyone heard of something like this? Far less frequently, we lose files in the root partition. The filenames and directory entries are preserved, but the inode content appear to have been over-written with those of another inode. When this happens it usually appears that 8 consecutive inodes have been written onto 8 other consecutive inodes (a sector perhaps?). Running fsck, and restoring the lost files fixes the problem. I haven't been able to identify any common cause of this, mostly because there is no way to pinpoint precisely when it happens, and it has only occurred two or three times. If anyone has heard of this, or can ensure that replacing the hard disk is a cure, please email me. Thanks, Ragnar -- Ragnar Paulson ...lsuc!dvlmarv!tsgfred!ragnar The Software Group Limited 4701 Steeles Avenue West, Suite 201 Weston, Ontario, M9l 1X2