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Article #167

Re: Removable Disk Nightmares

#167
From: col... Sean Colbath
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 1989 22:49
26 lines
1921 bytes
In article <8...@thor.wright.EDU> eco...@thor.wright.edu writes:
>	*** A TRAGEDY FROM DAYS OF OLDE ***
>
>I was disc-ussing a problem with a co-worker when we heard a
>high-pitched sound emanating from the computer room.  "Sounds
>like a head crash," this co-worker said.  "Yeah," I replied.
>
>I walked over to the computer room and got there just in time
>to find another co-worker spinning up a disk.  "I think we may
>have had a head crash.  I'm just spinning this disk up to see."
>
>Oh well!  Two 50 MB diskpacks byte the dust.

It could be worse -- this isn't necessarially a tragedy from days of olde.
If you've ever worked with mountable disks, the first thing you learn is
that if you *ever* drop a disk pack, you don't put that pack back in a drive
until it's been checked out, because the platters may have moved out of
alignment.  I knew of a student who was operating a PDP with some removable
RL02 disks, who failed to notice the little red "dropped disk" indicator
that are on DEC platters.  When he discovered that he was unable to read the
disk, he moved it over to another drive "to figure out if the problem was
with the drive or the disk."  Hmm, this disk doesn't read over here either.
Well, let's try the next drive...  Result:  3 disk drive head assemblies
trashed...  Sigh...

>-- ERIC CONRAD
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Message-ID: <1989Dec15.224939.24158@cs.rochester.edu>
Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!rochester!colbath
References: <879@thor.wright.EDU>

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Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!rochester!colbath
From: col...@cs.rochester.edu (Sean Colbath)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Removable Disk Nightmares
Message-ID: <1989Dec15.224939.24158@cs.rochester.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 89 22:49:39 GMT
References: <879@thor.wright.EDU>
Reply-To: col...@cs.rochester.edu (Sean Colbath)
Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department
Lines: 26
Posted: Fri Dec 15 23:49:39 1989
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