Is this Click of Death or something else?

[Marius Diepenhorst]

Hi Folks,

I have a few SCSI Internal Zip Drives (100MB)

And I don't use them on PC or MAC, but as a SCSI 'harddisk' on my atari 8bit
computer. They are connected to a 50 pin scsi bus (parity enabled),
termination on (power on termination pin too). Everything works fine so far.

THE PROBLEM:
Normal the drive turns of after ca. 15 minutes idle.

but when I've used the zipdrive for a few days this setting seems completely
confused. Sometimes it turns of while reading a file... then it goes on
again... or when a file is loaded it immediately turns off again.

Anyone an idea what this is? Is this a defective zipdisk or are my drives
not ok?

I hope someone can help me, because I have a few of these drives, and really
want to use them on my atari 8bit.

All help is appreciated!

Thanks
Marius

-The Netherlands.

[D***@ix.netcom.com]

Post by Marius Diepenhorst
I have a few SCSI Internal Zip Drives (100MB)
And I don't use them on PC or MAC, but as a SCSI 'harddisk' on my atari 8bit
computer. They are connected to a 50 pin scsi bus (parity enabled),
termination on (power on termination pin too). Everything works fine so far.
Normal the drive turns of after ca. 15 minutes idle.
but when I've used the zipdrive for a few days this setting seems completely
confused. Sometimes it turns of while reading a file... then it goes on
again... or when a file is loaded it immediately turns off again.
Anyone an idea what this is? Is this a defective zipdisk or are my drives
not ok?

I used to think that might be a sign of impending drive failure
because the first time I experienced it, one of my drive's heads
"disappeared" after a few weeks. But the 5.5-year-old drive I'm
currently using has been doing that for a couple years, and it still
seems to work fine apart from that. My brother used to have one in a
Macintosh that did that too; as far as I know, it didn't fail before
he just quit using it.

If you hadn't noticed yet, I don't really have an answer for you. But
if it bothers you, it would probably be worth trying another disk.
Defragmenting the disk might also be worth trying (the best way to do
that on a Zip disk is to copy the contents to another disk and then do
a quick format on the first disk before copying the data back).

[Marius Diepenhorst]

Post by D***@ix.netcom.com
If you hadn't noticed yet, I don't really have an answer for you. But
if it bothers you, it would probably be worth trying another disk.
Defragmenting the disk might also be worth trying (the best way to do
that on a Zip disk is to copy the contents to another disk and then do
a quick format on the first disk before copying the data back).

You don't believe what I found as solution (and that works for now... VERY
strange)

When I use the drive up side down everything works perfect. As soon as I
turn the drive back in it's normal position the problem is back again. Very
strange.
Now I have build in an old CD rom case with powersupply and it is mounted up
side down, so I'm curious how long this will stand... I'm glad I found
something that worked.

Thanks for the advice. I might try that when this is going to fail.

Marius

[D***@ix.netcom.com]

Post by Marius Diepenhorst
You don't believe what I found as solution (and that works for now... VERY
strange)
When I use the drive up side down everything works perfect. As soon as I
turn the drive back in it's normal position the problem is back again. Very
strange.

I've never tried running one upside down. That is not a recommended
configuration, but looking at the inside of a drive, I doubt that it
would cause problems unless there were some difficulty inserting or
ejecting disks.

The drive I'm using is internal, so it would be a bit of a job to flip
it over. But in the past with external drives, I have noticed that
they sometimes run better when oriented vertically rather than
horizontally (or vice versa).