CompuServe Messages

Don, Another thing that can cause hard drive "oscillations" is recalibration. My Quantum did this when I first got it. Really freaked me out the first couple of times it happened! The really spooky thing was, it would start this all by itself. I would check the drive light, and it was solidly off. If I accessed the drive somehow, say, by listing a directory, the seeks would often stop, though not always. Oftentimes the drive would start a recalibration when I accessed it, and it would take a couple of tries to get it to stop. After I figured out what was probably going on, I let it go, and finish what it was doing without interrupting it. It's been almost three years now since I bought that drive (it's a Quantum Q40S), and it hasn't done this for a couple of years now. The drive sounded like it was doing a seek test of some sort (which is what a recalibration is, after a fashion). The reason for recalibration happening is that the drive is adapting itself to the ambient temperature, and thus the different tolerances in platter sizes, head spacing, and so on. Getting back to the question that started this thread, I'd suggest that if the drive's access light is off when the drive is oscillating, then it's probably a normal occurence. Like I said, mine used to do it, and I've used that drive for a long time now, with *zero* trouble with it that couldn't be traced to errant software (and precious little of that, either). OTOH, if the light is ON, then there's probably a read problem somewhere, and the drive should be backed up, and a bad block scan run over it. I forget which software the original poster said he had, but most of the software I've seen will automatically scan for bad blocks and mark them. (I know Supra's and Nexus' software will, that's what I've got; I think GVP's will, too.) –dds Whappeta-whappeta-Whap!