[ILUG] SCSI Disk Failure

[Paul Jakma]

On Fri, 11 May 2001, Damian O' Sullivan wrote:

> I have a 50gig SCSI disk (seagate barricuda) that I think may have given uo
> the ghost.

50gig.... hmm..

> I had it mounted read only for about a year and then over the last week it
> stopped working.

at least a year old! damm... must have cost a bundle.

> I rebooted the machine and the SCSI bios can see the name of the
> drive but cannot do anything else with it. It claims the disk is
> not ready. My question (I think) is - Has this happened to anyone
> else before?

yes. it's often accompanied by a tick..........tick........tick....
noise as the drive tries to spin up.

There are tricks to try, eg: a tip with so many references and
testimonials on the internet that it could be true is to cool the hard
drive overnight in your fridge. This often will revive the hard drive
long enough to allow you to recover your data from it.

after that: try tapping, maybe even smacking it with/against something
flat.

> I have tried another SCSI disk on the cable and it is
> fine. Is there any company that can fix these for a reasonable
> price or is the disk gone?

there are companies but they cost a fortune and do not guarantee that
they can recover anything.

i've never heard of companies who fix disks - except for the
manufacturers (who claim to). But you probably won't get the same disk
back, and even if you did the data would be gone.

if it's only a year or so old it should still be under warranty. ('s
long as it's not OEM).

> I have about 30gig music files on it so
> I really don't want to lose it. Quite depressing and of course no
> back up.

good luck

>
> Damian O'Sullivan                        Open Systems Engineer
>
>
>
>

--paulj