🚀 go-pugleaf

wrb@cbnews.cb.att.com (wallace.r.blackburn) writes:

>Seagate got a bad rap some time ago for some seemingly bad drives (the
>ST-251 comes to mind).  There is an argument though that the drives were
>really not the problem as much as how people were using them.  They were
>popular in DOS PCs where people knew very little about how such things
>should be treated.

>They shut them down without parking the heads, turn the computer off in the
>middle of a disk access, etc.  Now you could say "If people are going to
>use them like that, they should make them to withstand it."  I think that
>what they started doing - but they learned on the ST-251 types.

Seagate ST251 drives self park, you can unplug them and they'll park,
they use the back-emf from the spindle motor to power the stepper
motor into a parked position.  

The problem (speaking as someone who replaced HUNDREDS of ST251s in
his past days in tech support) was that Seagate put too much lubricant
on the platters, and after a while, it'd ball up on the leading edge
of the heads, then when they touched down, (and the drive was hot) the
ball of lubricant would get pulled under the head, and flow around it
making a good secure seal, as long as the lubricant was new, it was
ok, but after it'd been heated and cooked some, (and the 251's
typically ran pretty hot), it'd turn to sludge, sticking the heads to
the platters so the drive wouldn't spin up.

that was the cause of about 95% of the field failures we experienced,
and why we'd end up shipping out CDC 40 mb drives to replace the
Seagates.  They cost us more up front, but it was cheaper than continuing
on sending out drives that we knew would fail.
-- 
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Your mileage may vary. Call before digging. Best if eaten by date on package.
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Michael Masterson                                   mmaster@parnasus.dell.com