Hard Drive Failure

[Atari Smeghead]

Well, the time has come for me, as sad as it is. My 4 MB 1040 STe has been in the closet for several years and I need the money as well as the space.

 

So, I pulled everything out for the several week testing period prior to the enevitable eBay series of auctions. (At least I get to have some fun!!)

 

However, and no surprise here, my external shoebox hard drive will not boot up. The ON/OFF switch lights up when I turn it on, but the drive won't spin.

 

I've had trouble with this drive before and I remembered an old trick... picking up the box and "rotating" it, physically giving the drive a quick, sharp spin to get the drive to begin spinning again. I couldn't remember if I should try it clock-wise or counter clock-wise, so I tried both.

 

It didn't help. Nothing but silence.

 

Any other things I can try?

 

 

Thanks for any help you can give,

Smeg

[hunter44102]

Try this:

 

Put the drive in an Anti-static bag, and put it in the FREEZER overnight.

 

In the morning, connect it up and try.

 

The cold temperature shrinks the components and head. Sometimes just enough to let it spin up.

 

This doesn't work for all cases, but it works with many hard drives that won't spin up or do not read data.

 

If it works, it means that you better pull off any important data, but most likely the drive is shot for long term use.

[Paranoid]

The symptoms you describe are called "stiction", the bearings on the drive where begining to sieze when you put it away for storage.

 

Even if you *could* get the drive to spin up, it is effectively dead. Replace the drive mechanism. Is it SCSI, MFM, or IDE?

 

My guess is it is SCSI or MFM. You should just replace the drive.

[jens]

If it will spin up once I'd say it will spin up again, especially if it'll be used more often.

I had some drives that got sort of sticky, and by rotating them they worked again.

 

Being used for some hours should make them start better the next time I think.

[ijor]

I had one of those "sticky" drives. Was a not so uncommon problem at the time.

 

My experience was similar to what Jens comments. Just a manual rotation helped. Once it spinned up, it worked flawlessly until it was turned off. Then the behavior next time usually depended on how much time elapsed until turned on again. If after a full day or more, then I had to give him a manual push again.

[jens]

I was lucky - those drives still work.

[+remowilliams]

I've had a drive or two not spin up due to 'stickiness'. Luckily both times a little smacking around with my highly trained hands solved the problem

[Atari Smeghead]

Thanks for the ideas, everyone!

 

I gave the Freezer approach a try. Man, the shoebox, being metal, sure was painfully cold to the touch after that! But, nothing.

 

I tried rotating again (and again, and again...) more and more violently. I even "tried" Remo's idea (okay, I just beat on it... tapped it on the table, etc... figured at this point, I may as well get some frustration out) but no go. I guess she's a dead duck.

 

I guess the next thing I'll do is open the box up and see what's inside. I found an abandoned 40 meg hard drive at work... hasn't been used since 97. It'll require rotation too, probably, but maybe I can salvage a working drive. I'm just not sure how I'll be able to get the ST to recognize a brand new drive for me to format it. I have some old HD floppies, Hard Disk Sentry is one.. I'll boot that up and see what happens.

 

I would suspect that the dead drive is a SCSI... I bought it new in the late 80s or early 90s. I'm pretty sure that was the flavor at the time.

 

And yeah, the last time I got it running, after much rotation, I copied every file of importance off of it. I had a lot of BBS files, original stories, etc. I would've hated losing them.

 

Again, thanks for the help!

 

Randy

[Paranoid]

If it is a SCSI, you could look at your local thrifts for old Macs to turn up. Most of them are going to have SCSI drives in them, and the older macs generally have drives between about 40mb and 500mb... which should be about right for an ST.

 

SCSI was the drive of the day back then... and the 50pin SCSI drives of that time were more prone to stiction than other makes...

 

But, the ST had a *lot* of MFM/RLL interfaces as well, because that was cheap PC technology of the time, and the ST was aimed as a kind of affordable alternative to the Amiga and Mac.

 

The important thing is that only the drive is probably bad. Your interface/enclosuer is probably fine... and a replacement drive should be *cheap*.

[+doctorclu]

The older SCSI drives are nice in a way, but now days they are small, noisy, ect.

 

Well, one option I was looking into for a Macintosh Duo (SCSI based) was to get a SCSI to IDE converter, and using a newer IDE drive.

 

The only issue you might run into is that the converter would take a bit more room, but aside from that, this solution works well. And if you don't mind using a bit more room, once you have converted SCSI to IDE, then it is only a $20 jump to get a IDE to Compact flash adaptor.

[jens]

The important thing is that only the drive is probably bad. Your interface/enclosuer is probably fine... and a replacement drive should be *cheap*.

Unless it is a Scsi one it won't be too easy to find. MFM or RLL drives are rare, at least in Europe - don't know about other parts of the world.

[Paranoid]

I've got a couple in the garage. Don't know if they are RLL or MFM... but I bet they spin up.

 

And I see old 286 systems floating through thrift stores fairly frequently still.

[Atari Smeghead]

Okay, I opened up the hard drive case and it is a SCSI. In fact... here's a question:

 

The shoebox has an ICD AdSCSI interface in it, and the AdSCSI has a small, round battery in it. If the battery is dead, could that be a reason for the hard drive's failure to spin up, maybe? Is it worth the couple bucks to go to my local Radio Shack and buy one?

 

Smeg

[jens]

Don't think so.

The battery should hold the time for a realtime clock.

It can be set with ICD tools.

[chance227]

Hi there

 

If you are not in a real great hurry for a replacement Drive, I could send one out to you

in a few weeks, that will boot up straight away on the controller you already have.

keep what you have got, and go for a scsi drive as a replacement drive with the ICD Drivers

You controller card is a very popular ICD card and has a good reputation with scsi

drives, using over 1 gig drives will give you plenty of Disk space.

 

 

 

Send me a PM and give me your details for shipping if you are interested

 

Regards chance227

[Atari Smeghead]

Hi there

 

If you are not in a real great hurry for a replacement Drive, I could send one out to you

in a few weeks, that will boot up straight away on the controller you already have.

keep what you have got, and go for a scsi drive as a replacement drive with the ICD Drivers

You controller card is a very popular ICD card and has a good reputation with scsi

drives, using over 1 gig drives will give you plenty of Disk space.

 

 

 

Send me a PM and give me your details for shipping if you are interested

 

Regards chance227

 

Thanks for the offer! I may take you up on it, but first, I'll try to find one here, locally.

 

I was planning on eBaying my system, well, today. But, instead, I'm in the process of gutting all the old IBM systems laying around at work, In Search Of... No luck so far, but I am also calling up some local computer stores. SOMEONE will have a SCSI hard drive, buried and forgotton. Then, I can make sure the controller works. THEN, I can sell the thing.

 

But until then... thanks again!

 

So, the ST / AdSCSI could actually handle up to 1 Gig? I just assumed that the 10-50 Meg drives were about the limit. What is the size limit?

 

Smeg

[jens]

I'm not sure about the limit.

The Atari controllers originally used could handle up to one gig on the Acsi ports.

This limit however fell with the TT and Scsi.

 

TOS might be able to use bigger partitions and hard drives than the controllers actually do.

 

With MagiC or MiNT combined with HdDriver you can use partitions up to two terabytes I think (Fat32).

 

For the AdScsi up to one gig should be fine. Maybe drives won't work due to bus arbitration or parity issues.

[ijor]

So, the ST / AdSCSI could actually handle up to 1 Gig? I just assumed that the 10-50 Meg drives were about the limit. What is the size limit?

 

There is virtually no limit from the point of view of the hardware and physical disk size. ICD host adapters implement ACSI extensions that allow them to break the 1 Gb limit.

 

Depending on the driver and operating systems and version, there is a partition size limit.

[jens]

There is virtually no limit from the point of view of the hardware and physical disk size. ICD host adapters implement ACSI extensions that allow them to break the 1 Gb limit.

Are you sure that's true for all ICD drivers?

[+DarkLord]

There is virtually no limit from the point of view of the hardware and physical disk size. ICD host adapters implement ACSI extensions that allow them to break the 1 Gb limit.

Are you sure that's true for all ICD drivers?

 

I can't say positively about other setups, but here is whats working on my BBS:

 

Mega ST4

TOS 1.04

HDDriver v8.15

+4 gig Seagate HD

ICD's Link2

 

and with this setup, I have 9 partitions, C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K

each about 500 megs apiece.

 

So a hard drive larger than 1 gig is possible on older STs for sure. I don't

think, IIRC, that I could go over the 500 meg limit with TOS 1.04 though.

I believe that newer versions of TOS support up to the 1 gig limit per

partition.

 

Anyone with other experience or better info, please correct me if needed.

 

Thanks.

[ijor]

There is virtually no limit from the point of view of the hardware and physical disk size. ICD host adapters implement ACSI extensions that allow them to break the 1 Gb limit.

Are you sure that's true for all ICD drivers?

 

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are asking. You mean all drivers, or all adapters?

 

I think all ICD host adapters, except the first generation (FAST), support the SCSI extended commands. Then, all ICD drivers bundled with the AdSCSI or later adapters support them. Earliest drivers (version 2.x, I think) will not.

 

If you are asking about the Pro vs. Standard level, then yes, it is supported in all levels.

[jens]

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you are asking. You mean all drivers, or all adapters?

Adapters.

Thanks for pointing that out. :-)

[jens]

[...]

 

So a hard drive larger than 1 gig is possible on older STs for sure. I don't

think, IIRC, that I could go over the 500 meg limit with TOS 1.04 though.

I believe that newer versions of TOS support up to the 1 gig limit per

partition.

TOS 4.04 supports more, and I think that you can push other TOS versions as well by using BigDos.

With MiNT or MagiC you can use Fat32 partitions that go up to two TB.

I think that you could install CrippleMiNT on the Mega 4 and make one small boot and one large data partition on your Seagate (BGM and Fat32). You might try it with a different ST.

 

As for the bus arbitration problem:

Attach your Seagate to your Falcon with and without arbitration activated and see if it will be usable both times.

My old Quantum did not like the Falcon without arbitration and if your Seagate would behave in the same way it would be clear the Link does support arbitration.

[Zeptari1]

There is virtually no limit from the point of view of the hardware and physical disk size. ICD host adapters implement ACSI extensions that allow them to break the 1 Gb limit.

Are you sure that's true for all ICD drivers?

 

I can't say positively about other setups, but here is whats working on my BBS:

 

Mega ST4

TOS 1.04

HDDriver v8.15

+4 gig Seagate HD

ICD's Link2

 

and with this setup, I have 9 partitions, C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K

each about 500 megs apiece.

 

 

9 partitions at 500megs each?????!!!!! WOW!!!!!

 

Can I do this with my mega ste?

 

What type of hard drive do i look for? I wonder if the version of HDloader i have will work? I'll check my ST to see what it says at bootup.

 

 

internet links?

 

I'd also like to get on the Net with my st.... but that's much latter...

 

-Rick

[krupkaj]

The maximal size of partition depend on operating system you use. I am not sure with the limits of TOS in MEGA STE, but I think it is 256MB. In case you are using MagiC or MiNT you can make larger partitions. I have 1GB ext2 partition under MiNT for example.