jdravk@speech2.cs.cmu.edu (Jeanette Dravk) (05/24/91)
This is regarding my sister's system (she has no USENET access). My sister has a one ad a half year old Mac IIcx with 2 meg of memory, the standard 1.44 HD drive and a 40MB Quantum hard drive. A few months ago she noticed that occasionally the system wouldn't copy disks and would scramble them in the process of attempting to do so. Now, the situation is much worse. The only way she can copy files is from a *locked* disk to the hard drive. It's impossible to copy anything from the hard drive to a disk or to intialize disks. Again, if the disk is not locked it becomes hopelessly scrambled and unreadable. Replacing the system (three times) doesn't help. Some friends have advised her to reformat her hard drive and start over but if that happens she'll lose approx. 30 MB of data. So now she wants to know if anyone can help -- either by telling her why this is happening and what she can do and/or helping her find a way to save the data/somewhere to dump it before formatting the disk. (obviously cloning the disk would be ideal, but she's a poor college student so that's not an option). If anyone lives within a couple hours of the Philadelphia area and has either a spare external drive or a BBS she could borrow for a short while she would gladly compensate you for the trouble. You can either send me mail or call her directly at (215) 935-2510 and ask for Steph. Thank you!!! jeanette- -- #*#*#*#*#*# Transient Creature of the Wide, Wild World #*#*#*#*#*#*#* "Time is not linear to me, it is a nebulous web of existential freedom."
hasses@prism.cs.orst.edu (Stephen Haase) (05/24/91)
On the topic of bad drives, my 3.5" HD drive has been acting up for the last 6 months, steadily getting worse. Basically it will fail to recognize good disks, get media errors while copying files to anf from the disks, failed formatting etc. Well a few days ago, a friends 5.25" on his IBM died, in taking it apart, he noticed that there was approximately 2 cubic tons, well maybe not that much 8-), of dust in the drive, he cleaned it and it worked fine. I looked in my drive with a light and low and behold I found gobs of it... absolutely everywhere. I have a IIci, so I popped off the top, unscrewed the 3.5" bracket, yanked out the power supply, yanked out the 3.5 and bracket, disconnected the drive from the bracket and then took off the metal cover and guess what I found? An entire herd of dust bunnies...It took about 10 minutes to actually get the drive out and open and about 20 minutes to get rid of all the dust inside. But now it works great, it recognizes disksd, copies fine and is even a bit quieter. I wonder how much they would have charged me at the local Apple dealer to do the same thing? Steve hasses@prism.cs.orst.edu