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In article <18768@mimsy.UUCP> spector@brillig.umd.edu.UUCP (Lee Spector) writes:
.I remember some discussion a few months back about "sticking" Apple hard
.drives.  Well, my new (< 1 month old) IIcx just failed to recognize its 
.Apple 80 meg internal hard drive at startup.  I restarted but the problem 
.persisted.  Then I disconnected the power, waited a few minutes, and tried 
.again - this time everything worked fine.  This leads me to ask several 
.questions:
.
.  1) Was the problem with sticking drives ever officially recognized or
.     fixed?
.
.  2) Does the symptom I've described necessarily forshadow near-term drive
.     failure?  (Is there any less serious problem that could cause it?)
.
.  3) Is there anything I can do to remedy the situation before
.     the drive dies?  (Was there some kind of "secret recall"?)
.
.Some previous posters had linked the problem to cold weather, but that is
.definately not a factor in this case.  By the way, I've tried to minimize the
.number of power-ups to about one per day - I'd leave it on all the time
.if it weren't for all of the thunder storms in Maryland at this time of year.
.
.Thanks for any and all responses,
.   Lee Spector (spector@brillig.umd.edu)
.   University of Maryland

Same happened to me, and I am stuck in Israel and unable to take advantage
of warrenty for repairs!  Anyway, I took the mac to local dealer (who can't
honor the warrenty, but was willing to take a look) and he said the problem
was in the motor.  The motor has a "dead" spot.  If you start the machine
when the motor is at this angle, it won't be able to spin up.  The solution,
to get a new one.  The price, here, $1000 or so.  The funny thing is, though,
that the drive will hang in the middle of operation, not only at powerup.
I have found, through experimentation, that if the drive doesn't spin up,
you can make it spin up by tilting the mac (and the drive) some 90 degrees
or so.  When the drive starts responding slugishly during operation, there
is little to do.  I usually (1) ignore it and wait for it to respond normalluy
again, or (2) turn it off and stop working for the day (this has done wonders
to my sleeping habits! :-()  I am currently using the internal 80 as a temp
storage device and working off a DD70 (Jasmine, and faultless, so there!).
When in the USA later this summer I plan to replace it, not under warenty,
but certainly a little cheeper then here.  I haven't had a single occasion
when data was lost, except with the drive stopped working in middle of
operation, and then it was only the latest data to be written, and always
when I exited to the finder, so the ram-cache was flushed already.  The 
hardware tests always indicate that all blocks are alive and well on the
disk.  My system is a SE/30.  If anyone has advice on what to do, which would
be simple and cheeper then replacing the drive, PLEASE send me info.
-- 
Yossie Silverman                                   What did the Caspian sea?
National Semiconductor Ltd. (Israel)
cyosta%taux01@nsc.nsc.COM         or        RPR1YOS@TECHNION.BITNET
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