davem@bcsaic.UUCP (doug ruth) (02/03/86)
I recently bought a 20 meg harddisk to upgrade my IBM PC-1. Since I didn't buy a power supply upgrade, I salvalged one from an old project and set the disk and power supply up externally. The drive was running awfully warm. Too warm. Hot as a pistol. The second day, after being on for about three hours, DOS starts to complain about the drive. After turning off, and cooling down, I find I have to reformat some bad sectors off the media. The question is, did I just get a lemon or is this a chronic problem? I intend to send it back monday ... the drive is running in the open air, and I keep it pretty cool at my house. Still, the only way to prevent it from heating severely is to put a pack of blue ice (I kid you not!!!) on top of the drive. Please respond to the following address, as I am a guest on this system. thanks in advance... david m. chinn ...uw-beaver!teltone!dataio!butler!chinn
dmt@mtgzz.UUCP (d.m.tutelman) (02/05/86)
> I recently bought a 20 meg harddisk to upgrade my IBM PC-1. > Since I didn't buy a power supply upgrade, I salvalged one > from an old project and set the disk and power supply up > externally. > > The drive was running awfully warm. Too warm. Hot as a pistol. > ..... > The question is, did I just get a lemon or is this a chronic problem? > I intend to send it back monday ... the drive is running > in the open air, and I keep it pretty cool at my house. I don't know about hard disks, but I've had similar problems with half-height floppy drives. I'm convince that these components were intended for use with FORCED-AIR COOLING. That fan on the back of your PC isn't just there to make annoying noise -- it really does suck the air through. Experience: I've never taken a warm (to the touch) diskette out of a PC with a fan. However, my machine at home (homebrew, with external floppies) ALWAYS warms up the diskettes after a couple of minutes. When I had the drives in a fanless case, DOS stopped working after 10 minutes -- the warm floppies come out of NAKED drives. I've had this experience with about five different drives, including some with pretty low dissipation. So I doubt it's the drive that's a bummer; you need to keep moving the air past it. Dave Tutelman Physical - AT&T Information Systems Room 3P432 200 Laurel Avenue Middletown, NJ 07748 Logical - ...ihnp4!mtuxo!mtgzz!dmt Audible - (201) 957 5535 ---------------------------------------------------------------