More on HD problems.....

Scott Johnson (johnsos@ECE.ORST.EDU)
Thu, 20 Jul 1995 17:58:25 -0700

I've gotten closer to figuring out what is going on with my HD. A surface
scan of the HD revealed no problems. However, what appears to be happening
is that something is causing the HD to spin down/park. (My other drive, a
Seagate 103 or something like that, also is spinning down occasionally. H
However, its my DOS drive, and DOS seems to be handling the situation
correctly (waiting for the drive to spin up, and then going ahead with
whatever.) Linux, as mentioned before, sends whatever process into an
uninterruptable sleep (a state of affairs I consider to be a bug.) I wonder
what Warp does...maybe I'll try to see if this error occurs there as well.

BTW, the controller for both drives is a standard IDE controller...I suspect
the hardware problem causing this is a power supply problem (aren't IDE drives
designed to spin down and park automatically when the power drops, and couldn't
an undervoltage cause this behavior?).

Thanks,

Scott