wayner@CS.Cornell.EDU (Peter Wayner) (05/07/91)
The symptoms: Four days ago, I turned on my Mac IIci and nothing happened. A mouse pointer appeared, the drive light came on, but there was no happy mac. After about a minute, a disk light came on asking for a floppy. I could boot up a Norton Emergency Disk, but this software couldn't find the disk on the SCSI port. The computer seemed to be fine, it just got a bit lost whenever it tried to find the internal hard drive on the SCSI bus. My warranty: I bought this drive from Apple in December 1989. It is well out of warranty. The problem: It turned out that the head was "stuck" to the platter and the motor didn't have enough torque to unstick it. Apparantly the drive grease gets gummed up or something. This was a problem with 40 meg Quantum drives and it now seems to be a problem with Sonys. (I remember being happy not to get a Quantum when I picked up the machine a year and a half ago. :-) The solution: Try this if you feel brave, your machine is out of warranty and you've got NOTHING TO LOSE. You might want to try it even if the disk is still under warranty, the symptoms are the same, but the dealer tells you the data is GONE. I, myself, make no warranty about its usefulness. It just worked for me. 0) Keep yourself grounded. Static electricity kills components. 1) Open up the case. 2) Take out the hard disk. Disconnect the cables and make a note about how they connect. The sockets are idiot-proofed, but you might want to make sure. 3) Unscrew the mounting bracket. Now you can see the circuit board completely. 4) There are three screws that hold the board down. Unscrew them. Note that one handling ground is a slightly different length and another one has a lock washer. 5) Now the board is held down by several ribbon connectors and a wire or two. If you can get your finger underneith the board, find the large wheel. If you can't, undo the ribbon connectors. I was forced to do this and it is slightly tricky getting them back together. It is hard to tell when they are mated correctly. 6) Turn the wheel around. This is connected to the disk inside. When I did this, I felt resistence at first, then ease and then resistence when I had made one full rotation bringing the head back to the gummy grease. After several turns, the grease was well-spread out and the resistance was gone. 7) Put it back together. 8) Buy a new drive. Prefererably one with a two-year warranty. 9) Reconsider the wisdom of perpetual backups or disk mirroring. 10) Mine booted fine. I'm considering leaving it on the system to see how long it lasts. Just for the sake of science. -- Peter Wayner Department of Computer Science Cornell Univ. Ithaca, NY 14850 EMail:wayner@cs.cornell.edu Office: 607-255-9202 or 255-1008 Home: 116 Oak Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850 Phone: 607-277-6678
hp48sx@wuarchive.wustl.edu (HP48SX Archive Maintainer) (05/09/91)
I have restarted many dead drives where I work. Just put a screwdriver through the hole on the PCB board of the SONY drive, and turn it. In the SE/30 you can even bend a clip from a pen, and use it through the hole when you have opened the computer. Then there is no need to remove thre drive. -- ******************************************************* Povl H. Pedersen hp48sx@wuarchive.wustl.edu HP48sx archive maintainer
steveh@tasman.cc.utas.edu.au (Steven Howell) (05/11/91)
However, you must remember that you are running a possibility of ripping a couple of the drives heads off or scratch a track. If you move the armature (ie left to right) you may scratch tracks 0->8 If you move or spin the platter, you can ripp the heads off. great fun eh' steve h
yuan@uhunix2.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Yuan 'Hacker' Chang) (05/20/91)
In article <1991May7.164219.22051@cs.cornell.edu> wayner@CS.Cornell.EDU (Peter Wayner) writes: > >The solution: > [ Procedure to restart the drive deleted ] > >10) Mine booted fine. I'm considering leaving it on the system >to see how long it lasts. Just for the sake of science. Not very long, I can tell you from experience. At our office, we have 8 of those Sony 40HDs. After year and a half of service, half of them died of "sticktion" w/in 3 months of each other. Unsticking the drive, and it gets progressively worse. My suggestion is not to buy another Sony drive until you know for sure they've fixed the problem. -- Yuan Chang "What can go wrong, did" UUCP: yuan@uhunix.UUCP InterNet: yuan@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu "Wouldn't you like to PhoneNet: (808) 956-3402 be an _A_m_i_g_o_i_d too?!?"