[ale] stiction?

[robbie at tomservo.eng.mindspring.net]

In our previous episode, Michelangelo Grigni was heard to say:
> 
> Over the long weekend I turned off my machine; now one of
> the drives (a fairly new 5.1G Maxtor IDE) apparently won't
> spin up.  I'm guessing it's stiction, since it seems to
> otherwise have power and attempts to seek.

I've seen stuck drives "fixed" by spinning them (upside down)
on carpet. Keep static electricity in mind- it's possible to
zap your drive on some carpets.
 
> Any advice on local shops to service this?  I would rather
> recover the data on the disk 

In my experience, data recovery folk can charge more than the
cost of a new drive, depending on what the problem is. If the
drive is fairly new, it might still be under warranty, which
won't cover data recovery, but should at least get you a new
working drive.

> (I don't want to re-install
> Windows95 yet again).

Hmm. Asking folks on a Linux mailing list how to recover a
Windows95 drive.. Wellll...

In that case, the proper method to unstick the drive is to
drop it repeatedly from a height of 5ft. Also, soaking the
drive in water will also occasionally unstick drives containing
Microsoft data.

:-}
Robbie

-- 
Robbie Honerkamp
robbie at shorty.com  http://www.shorty.com/~robbie/
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